Just as President Goodluck Jonathan is speculated to be planning a meeting with the seven aggrieved governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and some breakaway members, the party on Monday evening suspended its former National Secretary now National Secretary of the new PDP, Olagunsoye Oyinlola; National Chairman of the breakaway faction, Alhaji Abubakar Baraje; Deputy National Chairman, Sam Sam Jaja; and former Senator Ibrahim Kazaure.
Speaking with the media on Monday evening, national Publicity Secretary of the party, Olisa Metuh said the four were suspended for alleged anti-party activities, warning other party members to avoid having any dealings with the four and further asking them to report to the party’s disciplinary committee for appropriate sanctions.
nPDP Repudiate Suspension
However, the nPDP, has repudiated the suspension of the quartet, describing it as barbaric, uncivilized, unacceptable undemocratic and an abuse of PDP constitution.Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, National Publicity Secretary of nPDP, in statement issued minutes after the suspension, said,
“We have learnt with sadness the continued effort by Tukur and his NWC to rubbish the democratic credentials of PDP by embarking ceaselessly on exercises of impunity by announcing the suspension of Alh. Abubakar Kawu Baraje who was once the National Chairman of PDP, Dr. Sam. Jaja, one time National Vice Chairman of PDP, Barr Olasgunsoye the current National Secretary of PDP and Ambassador Ibrahim Kazaure who was once a member of the PDP NEC in flagrant and abuse of the PDP Constitution”
“Article 57 subsections 7 and 8 which states that "Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution relating to discipline, no Executive Committee at any level except NEC shall entertain any question of discipline as may relate or concern a member of the NEC, Public Officer Holder I.e. Ministers, Ambassadors, Special advisers or any member of the Legislative Houses! No disciplinary Committee at any level except National Disciplinary Committee shall impose any punishment provided under Article 57 of the Constitution arising from any disciplinary on any person named in Article 57 of this Constitution.”
“With this sections of our Constitution and considering that Prince Barr Oyinlola by his position as the incumbent National Secretary of PDP as stated by the Appeal Court and considering the privileged positions both Kawu Baraje, Sam Jaja and Ambassador Kazaure have occupied in the party it becomes a imperative and a sacrosanct fact that only the NEC of the party and not any funny NWC can suspend such calibre of members of the party as mentioned above therein and sadly for the ignoramus handling the affairs of PDP at the moment which undemocratic acts are legendary the continued plot to expose our party as lacking in principle should be condemned by all and sundry.”
“This illegal act exposes Tukur and his NWC as lacking not only democratic character but lack common understanding of the PDP Constitution. To us this is an abuse of the Judiciary which recently reinstated Oyinlola as the National Secretary of the party, abuse of the Nigerian Constitution on fair hearing and most importantly exposing the intolerant attitude of Tukur and his sponsors.”
“With this greatest joke of the century, Tukur and his funny NWC have only succeeded in exposing themselves not only as champion of undemocratic acts but the greatest enemies of PDP as all their actions are all geared at ensuring that peace eludes the party.”
“Nigerians can now understand why we are hell bent of ensuring that these military mentally inclined men are removed from our political psyche if we are to enrich and uplift our democratic credentials.”
“Finally, this uncivilised act and action is not acceptable to us as we insist that Prince Barr Oyinlola must be reinstated as a matter of urgency as ordered by the Appeal Court as the National Secretary of PDP. In this regard, we urge INEC and any other government agency not to entertain any document or letter from PDP without the authorisation of Prince Oyinlola in view of the fact that he is the incumbent National Secretary of PDP fully recognised and sanctioned by a creditable Court of our country.”
“We urge all good members of PDP to remain calm, steadfast and focussed as we fight the illegality which Tukur and his people represent as the task to strengthen and rebuild our party is a task that we must conclude.
PDP in Fresh Crisis over Oyinlola’s Reinstatement
As Huhuonline.com previously reported, a fresh round of crisis is brewing in the already-troubled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) courtesy of last week’s court ruling reinstating former Governor of Osun State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola as National Secretary of the party.
On Sunday evening , four armoured vehicles were seen at the national secretariat of the party, ostensibly as a reaction to claims by the New PDP that Oyinlola would resume office on today without a swearing in ceremony. Aside the four armoured vehicles, a detachment of policemen was seen at the Wadata Plaza, Zone 5 location of the secretariat.
The faction had addressed Oyinlola’s matter in a statement signed by its national publicity secretary, Chukwuemeka Eze to discuss the mode of receiving five unnamed PDP governors who had indicated interest in joining its fold.
“The committee was directed to submit for consideration by the G7 Governors the venue, logistics and modalities for receiving the five governors, ex-governors, nationalists and key members of the National Assembly who have indicated interest to join us”, read a part of the statement.
“The Committee is headed by Hon. Dr. Sam Jaja, the National Vice Chairman of New PDP, with Hon. Nasir Isa Abubakar, the National Organising Secretary, as the Secretary of the Committee. Other members of the Committee include Alhaji Abubakar G. Umar, National Treasurer Binta Masi Garba, Women Leader Timi Frank, the Youth Leader and Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, the National Public Secretary.
“The party, after considering the expert opinion of our Legal Adviser, Eric Opia, decided that Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola does not need any other oath of office to return to work as PDP National Secretary as he subscribed to PDP’s oath of office alongside other members of the NWC who were sworn in at the Eagle Square on March 24, 2012”.
NPDP claimed that President Goodluck Jonathan directed Oyinlola’s immediate reinstatement as National Secretary, “commending and congratulating the president for once again improving on his democratic credentials” with the move.
“Not minding the plots by some undemocratic elements within the system who want to portray our party in bad light by embarking upon an exercise in futility by trying to lure the Southwest PDP to write a petition against Prince Oyinlola and use it to invite him to the Alhaji Umaru Dikko’s Disciplinary Committee and suspend him afterwards”, NPDP said.
“To us, this plot, apart from being childish, exposes Tukur and his cohorts as true enemies of PDP and the force behind the continuous crisis in the party, which they don’t want its end because of their myopic and selfish goals. But thank God for the intervention of President Jonathan to end this undesirable macabre dance.”
However, National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh denied the claims, saying the president issued no such directive.
“There is no such directive and that is not how the party works. As I speak to you, there is no directive whatsoever from the president”, Metuh said.
“We have not even got a copy of the judgment of the court, let alone talking about reinstatement. You see, the so-called New PDP engages in over-dramatisation of issues. Rather than taking up issues with them, we have decided to focus on our work at the secretariat”.
Metuh also denied knowledge of the armoured vehicles at the PDP secretariat. “I am not aware”, he said.”
Similarly, Special Adviser to the President on Political Affairs, Ahmed Gulak denied the directive, expressing uncertainty about the existence of a court ruling and judgment.
“If there a court ruling and judgement to that effect, there is no problem,” Gulak said. “But I have not seen the court ruling. I have not seen the court judgment and I have not spoken with Mr. President. So, I am not aware. If the party is served a court judgment and the order, the party is a law-abiding party and there is nothing wrong there”.
On the same Sunday, the G-7 governors and leaders of the New PDP held a meeting at the Kano Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro District, where the court ruling on Oyinlola was officially assessed as a vindication of the ideals of the group.
“We are very happy with what has happened and the Secretary-General will resume his office appropriately after all due process have been covered,” Governor Babangida Aliyu said after the meeting.
“And we think it is a vindication of what has been transpiring because all along, the issues were issues of due process, issues of reform and we are happy that that the court has done this for us. So we look forward to resolution and future resolution of matters”.
However, he gave no specific date on Oyinlola’s resumption, saying it will be determined by the conveyance of the court ruling to the PDP.
“The moment he gives notice, he will resume”, he said. “There is a court judgment. The judgment must be given to the PDP secretariat and immediately he gives, he resumes. If by tomorrow [Monday] the court judgment is ready, he resumes tomorrow”.
Aliyu said the Court of Appeal judgement would expedite the resolution of PDP crisis but added that the ball is in the president’s court, as the Presidency has not yet given the NPDP any information on whether a meeting with the president will hold or when it will.
He also confirmed that the party is examining other options should peace talks with the president fail, such as joining the All Progressives Congress (APC) or other options that would provide the leverage to reorganise the PDP in 2015.
The leadership of the PDP is still contemplating the best way to handle the Oyinlola controversy, but it has nevertheless filed a process for a stay of execution on the Court of Appeal judgement — if only to buy time for the appropriate escape route. But not everyone in the party is in support of the delay in reinstating Oyinlola.
According to a high-ranking official of the party, the delay in reinstating Oyinlola is a dent on the party’s image, considering that Oyinlola was immediately replaced on Monday 14th January, after the Friday 11th January 2013 judgment of a Federal
“Some of us drew attention to the fact that Oyinlola had appealed the judgment and that the appeal was still pending. But some of our party leaders were in a hurry to ease Oyinlola out, so, they ignored the warning”, the source said.
“Now that the Appeal Court has overturned the ruling of the lower court, it would amount to self contradiction on the part of our leaders not to allow him take his position in line with the ruling”.
Also, PDP has failed to keep to its promise to immediately reinstate Oyinlola the same way he was removed, in the event of a court ruling.
“In any event, reports have indicated that Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola has appealed against the court judgement”, National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh wrote in a statement on 15th January 2013. “The NWC wants to say that as soon as the appeal is decided, the party will, in the same way as it did in the case of the Federal High Court ruling, obey the appeal decision.”
But Metuh has again defended this contradiction, saying the PDP leadership has yet to meet on the matter due to National Chairman Bamanga Tukur’s overseas trip.
“Moreover, I raised the matter with the National Legal Adviser and he told me that he had not received a copy of the judgment,” he added. “We in the National Working Committee will be meeting on Monday (today) where a decision will be taken”.
However, the party overlooked the governors who all recently played host to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
Oyinlola, a former governor of Osun State, was reinstated as the party's National Secretary five days ago by the Court of Appeal presided over by Justice Abdul Kafarati. The former governor was supposed to resume at the Wadata House, Abuja secretariat of the party, but before dawn, heavily fortified security men had taken over the secretariat to prevent his resumption.
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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