Lots of Igbo fools, including many top politicians, traditional rulers and other misguided elements jubilated when President Goodluck Jonathan was dragged by Ex Gov Peter Obi to belatedly commission an auctioned 419 Second Niger Bridge that will be tolled for 25 years. This president while seeking for Igbo votes in 2010 promised to deliver the bridge before the end of his tenure. Five years later and a year to the expiration of the same tenure, they concocted a PPP arrangement to make the Igbos pay for the bridge through the back door.
I have written an earlier write-up titled ‘Fraudulent Construction of 2nd Niger Bridge: Another 419 on the Igbo Nation’, where I gave a hint that the thieves that concocted the financial criminality on the Igbo nation will recoup their investment within 4 years there with exorbitant toll fees being planned, and the rest 21 years will be profits-and excess profits at the expense of the all wise Igbos. Since the piece was released, I have received far more facts which show that the N50 billion naira estimated as the inflated cost of the bridge is by far more costly. Under Obasanjo, the bridge was estimated to cost N54 billion naira (without the usual due process) and experts believe that with due process, the estimate would have reduced to N30 billion naira. It cost Yoruba man Fashola N29 billion naira to construct a l.3 km Lekki-Ikoyi suspension Bridge with adjoining roads while the 1.5 km 2nd Niger Bridge and 11 km adjoining roads will cost N117 billion naira. The difference is to be probably shared between some APGA chieftains, their PDP benefactors, and Julius Berger Consortium is just a smokescreen used to diver illicit gains.
This bridge will conservatively yield N12 billion annually for the 419 ers and in 25 years it will become N300 billion naira while not spending up to N50 billion on the project. I was told that the conservative estimate to be raked from toll at the Asaba end alone is N50 million naira daily. This translates to N1.5 billion naira monthly, therefore my estimate of N1 billion annually has been termed too conservative. With my professional finance and accounting background, I purposely made the figures very conservative.
It is most likely that the toll fee will be reviewed at least 5 times in 25 years to something above 500 percent and this will give the thieves revenues and profits in excess of N1 trillion naira in the same 25 years. In addition to this excess rip-off of the all wise Ndigbo, all the extortionist Federal Government agencies whose contempt for the Igbo Nation is phenomenal like the Nigerian Police, Customs, NDLEA, VIO, FRSC and Boko Haram will all have headquarters annexes at this tollgate to extort, intimidate and monitor the movement in and out of the South East - yet some Igbo fools are still jubilating. When the bridge is fully operational the tolling point of convergence and exit will afford the security agencies the opportunity of constituting a monitoring spirit to all the vehicular movements in and out of Igbo land and a telnet of such could be monitored from a personal computer anywhere in Sokoto, Maiduguri or Offa.
The 2nd Niger Bridge will be the only Federal Government owned bridge to be tolled throughout Nigeria. Bridges have been built all over Nigeria running into hundreds of billions of naira. Tolls at Lagos Ikoyi bridge has been stopped by the courts due to resistance from Yoruba nation and Igbos cannot be accepting what their counterparts in the west stoutly resisted. Dams, silos and-roads have been built for the rest of the country at costs beyond N150 billion like the Lagos-Shagamu road at a cost of N170 billion Naira yet it is only in Igbo land that a bridge will be built through PPP and some fools are jubilating.
The Lagos Shagamu expressway is to cost 170 billion naira and yet the Yoruba people have not groveled before any Jonathan the way the Igbo over praise the construction of a 419 Niger Brigde.
This bridge was first promised by Obasanjo and some Igbo fools around him failed to task him on his promise despite the fact that the South East voted en-masse for PDP. Later, Ebele Azikiwe followed in the footsteps of Obasanjo and after promising to finish building the bridge before 2015, he just recently woke up in 2014 and kick started the construction of a modern slavery of a bridge.
The problem that puzzles me is why the entire Igbo politicians, intelligentsia and traditional institutions failed to see this 419.
I was part of an Igbo clergy group comprising Archbishops, Bishops, Apostles, Pastors and church leaders with members drawn from all denominations that held several meetings with some representative of Jonathan from February 2010 when he was still Acting President even before the death of Yar adua and we discussed on the projects the Jonathan government will do for Igbos as condition for unalloyed support in 2011 elections. The conditions include a new Niger Bridge, new Seaport, Enugu Airport to be upgraded to international standard, reconstruction of Enugu-Onitsha and Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway. There was a gentleman's agreement, and the group was on the verge of signing some agreements with Jonathan’s couriers and kinsmen before an Archbishop suggested that we involve Ohanaeze Ndigbo since nobody will leave his flock to chase Jonathan around to fulfill his promise. I initially opposed this view but then my voice was over ruled by the more elderly voices.
Since the church leaders involved Ohanaeze in 2010, a proactive demand schedule was reduced to political theatrics and unbridled sycophancy. A presidential aide hijacked both Ohanaeze and the noble demands and reduced the Igbo nation into a fleet of buses and couples of billions of naira under an Ohanaeze Foundation registered as personal business. Ohanaeze, of which I am a stakeholder, is yet to recover from that Foundation used to muzzle their voices. Even the much celebrated Enugu International Airport is another of such 419 on Igbos.
During the colloquium in honor of the demised Ohanaeze Ndigbo President-General, Ambassador Raph Uwechue, at the Ohanaeze National Headquarters in May this year, and as one of the guest speakers at the occasion, in paragraph 15 of my speech I tasked the Igbo leaders on the same PPP bridge thus '' Igbo leaders must ensure that the fraudulent construction of second Niger Bridge which will be tolled for 20 years is stopped forthwith. For our support for Jonathan, we should have a toll free Niger Bridge constructed with Federal Government money, not this private public-private partnershp meant to enslave Ndigbo”
I have personally called as many Igbo leaders as possible on this 419 bridge issue and many including elements in Ohanaeze , APGA, PDP and APC had explained to me that it is difficult to change the PPP model because one Mr Peter Obi and another Ebele Azikiwe seems to have some interests in the multi billion naira 25 year business
This 419 bridge being given to Ndigbo through the back door when even some illiterate NASS members from Nigeria's North is ensuring that multi billion naira dams, bridges, silos, roads, irrigation projects , fertilizers and recently Almajiri schools is being done in their zones by the Federal Government without any PPP enslavement . No Yoruba or Hausa-Fulani politician will accept such nonsense but Igbo leaders, politicians, businessmen, professionals all foolishly accepted the financial brigandage.
How a great nation that produced the likes of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Odumegwu Ojukwu, Emeka Anyaoku, Pius Okigbo, Emeagwali, Chimamanda, Okonjo Iweala, Chinua Achebe etc will descend so low to be hoodwinked by an inflated 419 bridge PPP to be built at N117 billion when Governor Fashola of Lagos State built a similar one at N29 billion is still a Guinness Book wonder.
Lots of Igbo fools have rejoiced over a modern day financial)l brigandage over their future. Foolish Igbo leaders have followed the bandwagon to celebrate a fraudulent bridge. Their friendship with President Jonathan and even all the years the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) sold Igbo privileges to Jonathan cannot attract a toll free bridge. This is nothing but a charm that cannot catch me and my family. Shikena!!
Fools have taken over Igbo land as leaders, representatives, senators, governors, and presidential aides. It is time for all well meaning Igbo, including those in Diasporas to rise and condemn this financial criminality until this Julius Berger PPP enslavement is reversed. If Jonathan cannot give us a toll free bridge despite all our support then let it be. This jubilation of Igbo fools over 419 bridge must stop because an Igbo fooled after 54 years of independence with an auctioned bridge is a fool forever.
Obinna Akukwe
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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