President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday evening told Nigerians that he was not consulted before the country's electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) postponed the general elections earlier scheduled for February this year. This is against insinuations that the election postponement had some political undertone.
Jonathan, who answered questions from journalists at a special edition of his Media Chat, also expressed confidence in INEC as is currently composed and further expressed optimism that the INEC would conduct free and fair elections in the country.
Jonathan further promised that he remains resolute that a new government would be formed in May this year whether he lost or won the presidential election. He warned Nigerians against believing all stories they hear and read about his alleged plot to truncate the country's democracy.
"Let me reassure Nigerians that elections would be conducted and an inauguration would be made this year. Let them not be perturbed by statements like the President wants to send INEC chairman on a three months leave...it is better for INEC to conduct elections that we all believe to be free and fair," the President said.
He said he understood that Nigerians are concerned about the shift in the election date, but that during the Council of State meeting, "we met and discussed. They emphasised issues of security, which details they did not tell everybody. When INEC came up with the date for the election, there was no much issues until we began our campaign," he said complaining also that most people in the country do not have their Permanent Voters Cards. "In Lagos for example, only about 38 percent have their PVCs. There are some states where you have up to 68 percent and some states 38 percent and there are security implications to it," he said, adding that he wants a situation where eligible voters would be able to vote.
He said though he was not assuring that Boko Haram, being a major reason for the shift, would be totally wiped out in the six weeks demanded by the service chiefs, the government would make substantial progress in the confrontation and ensure that elections hold in the states currently being ravaged by Boko Haram.
"Adamawa, before this time, there were seven Local Governments taken over by Boko Haram. But as we talk now, it is Madagali that it left," he said promising that enough progress would be made and the internally displaced people could then go back to their villages where they can vote and that the government would build tents for those whose houses were destroyed.
Asked about what he would do differently if re-elected, President Jonathan gave the impression of not being satisfied with those currently working around him. He said would take seriously the impression people have of those working around him.
"We will need to adjust the way we do certain things because I have realised that in the society, what people assess you of is not the things you do, but how those things are done. The common things that people say is: 'oh! The President means well for this country'. Yes I mean well for this country because I am passionate about Nigeria. But they say: 'oh! People around the President are not good'.
"Then of course you must be very watchful of the actions and inaction of people around you so that they don't continue to drive the name of the government...it is not like many of them have done anything wrong, but the perception is worse...sometime you who are sitting there know the exact thing but if the perception is poor, then...
"Of course, we will manage the perception better. Most of the problems we are having is the perception. If you talk about concrete things that this government has done, I can challenge any group; if you look at the PTDF, the number of youths we are taking for technical training at the graduate level, masters and PhD, the number we have trained within this five years is more than the number we have trained from inception of that institution," he said.
Concerning the abducted Chibok girls, Jonathan promised that some of them would be recovered during this military onslaught. He however said Nigerians would begin to see the result of the confrontation from three weeks even though he does not want to make a specific promise.
He noted that it was not possible that all the abducted girls could be recovered and added that people had played much politics with the issue of the girls.
The President who confessed that he was always weighed down by the lack of support from Nigerians, noted that in other countries where terrorism reigns, people collapse political boundaries to find solutions to the challenge, but that in Nigeria, people take advantage of their contacts abroad to disgrace the country.
"Now that we are working with Chad and Cameroon, the story of the Chibok girls would get better. At least we can be able to rescue some of them. We have mapped out our configuration, just give us sometime.
"People try to misinform the world, play politics with the issue of Chibok girls. In most countries where you experience issues of terror, political boundaries collapse and people work together, but in this case, we have terror and you think the best way is to go to US and the others to celebrate.
"It is a collective responsibility. Is it by going to carry flags that you can bring back the girls? Those who have links outside used them negatively instead of positively.
"We will recover them alive. These girls have been in the hands of criminals. About 200 girls were kidnapped and you do not expect that the President would say he would bring back all the girls," he said while lamenting that some people even claim he is the one who has allowed the Boko Haram insurgency to fester.
Asked what would happen if the war against Boko Haram is not won in six weeks, the President answered: "in 2011, when we conducted elections, there was Boko Haram. Nobody is saying they must wipe out Boko Haram completely before conducting the elections. Definietly in the next six weeks or so, serious advancements would be made, we are not saying we would wipe out Boko Haram. Elections would be done."
He further lamented the rate at which politicians cross-carpet, saying it was not the best for Nigeria's politics. "In politics, there is no permanent friend or enemy but permanent interest. If you look at even the carpet crossing that is so much abused...some governors moved from the PDP to other parties and some moved to the PDP. It is not good.
"I know two presidents who have asked me what is wrong. It is because the courts have not taken a decision," he said.
Asked if this would not affect his support base, he said elections are about convincing people especially as history had shown that it is more difficult to win elections for a second term in office than in one's first term.
He also accused some unnamed politicians of instigating youths to pelt him with stones, saying it was a treasonable offence that could earn the perpetrators death, but that many of those who took part in the act were ignorant.
"You could be killed. The President is the only person that is guarded by soldiers. The Vice President is guarded by the police," he said maintaining that such actions and the provocative statements people have been making were not helping the electioneering.
He confessed that he got aggressive at the flag-off of his presidential campaign in Lagos because he was provoked by statements that the opposition had been making before that day.
Reminded that some people close to him have said there would be war if he lost, President Jonathan insisted that he was concerned about the people around the candidates. He recalled that it was the same Muhammadu Buhari, his main rival, that also contested against him in 2011 and the electioneering was not as bad as it is now.
He also insisted that the country was bigger and more important than any of their ambitions and that while other candidates could do what they liked, he cannot because he takes all the blames for whatever goes wrong including poor conduct of the elections where that happens.
"Within this campaign period, there are some instigations which are necessitated by some politicians. We are noticing some traces and no chief security would take it lightly," he noted.
Asked about the adverts of character assassination against some candidates contesting against him as well as those like chief Edwin Clark making provocative statements, President Jonathan said in most cases, he does not know those sponsoring such adverts adding that in politics, one must have friends and enemies but that for the friends, it is difficult to know what they do or say.
"One thing about politics is that you have a number of people who support you, but you do not know what they do or say. More than 80 percent of those who carry adverts about Jonathan, you may not even know," he said.
He however noted that hate speeches come from the two major candidates, "but we will do it in such a way that people do not go war. We must protect this country and those who are supporting us."
Asked why he visited churches and would not visit mosques, he said most of the pastors and churches invite him when they have events but that that it was not the same with the Muslims who prefer to invite the Vice President instead while he (President) only attends youth events but has not visited mosques because it is a purely religious issue.
Jonathan used the opportunity to clarify his much talked about controversial distinction between stealing and corruption. Jonathan who had said stealing was not corruption, said he was actually quoting a former Cheif Jistice of Nigeria, Dahiru Mustafa who had said when he checked the files, 80 percent of what people call corruption are stealing.
Explaining in details, he said many Nigerians do not know the difference and that as a result, they cover issues of stealing with the word 'corruption'. He said that in most villages and towns in the country, people saw stealing as more grievous than corruption.
"The good thing is that those who are making the statement did not say the President said stealing is good. I used that statement because I quoted Mustafa, a former ICPC chairman. Justice Mustafa said he took most of the files and more than 80 percent are just stealing. Our people hate thieves more than they hate people who are corrupt.
"If you say some people are corrupt, some people do not even know what you are talking about. A thief should be called a thief, ole should be called ole. If somebody is a thief, call him a thief. If somebody is ole, call him ole. Don't cover it with corruption. Let us communicate properly," he said adding that the ICPC is the legally authorised agency among the anti-corruption agencies that is saddled with the fight against corruption.
He also said in terms of prosecuting people, his government had achieved more conviction, "but even if you convict one million people, it won't stop it." He said the government was now making use of information technology to combat corruption just like the government had successfully done in the agricultural sector.
He disclosed that his government had not started drawing the $1b loan approved for security and the issue of the $9.3 billion seized by the South African government was in court. He said money had been paid to the company for the supply of arms and ammunition but that the company did not handle the cash well. He however said the arms for which the money was paid had been delivered.
The President further explained that the US refused to sell arms and hardware to Nigeria because of human rights concerns but that Nigeria was dealing with other countries even though some of the hardware were not as powerful as the ones needed for the battle.
He insisted that his government would not stay more than May 29 if he lost the forthcoming election. He however said the campaigns would continue since the elections had been postponed.
Concerning the failed ceasefire with the Boko Haram, the President said it was not that the government was swindled, but that though people actually met with the government, the Boko Haram seemed divided and factionalised, that was the reason the negotiation did not work.
Asked to assess Buhari, he said it was not a fair demand since they were both contesting for the same position.
"If I should assess Buhari, it is not fair of me. I think the garbage on me is much more than the one on Buhari. I don't even have the time to do social media. Some of the things I have observed I feel sad...I remember that the APC started their campaigns before me. If you listen to the way I spoke in Lagos, I was a bit aggressive because of the statements that have been made," he said.
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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