By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“A Judge who takes advantage of the judicial office for personal gain or for gain by his or her relative or relation abuses power…. such abuse of power profoundly violates the public’s trust in the judiciary.”

Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Rule 8:3 (2016)

Eight and a half years ago, in May 2017, a viral audio clip circulated, purportedly featuring a conversation between a male Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a female judge who had presided over an election petition involving the Senator in the preceding year. In the sound clip, both could be heard importuning one another. The female voice asked the Senator to ensure that whatever he delivered, he must “make it in USD (American dollars)” and sought reassurance from him in securing a job for her daughter in the public service of one of the states of the Niger Delta. The male voice seemed deeply solicitous of her wishes in a conversation that did not leave much to the imagination in terms of both the subject matter and the quid pro quo.

It was believed at the time that the clip involved a judge who served at the head of an election tribunal that dismissed a petition against the Senator in respect of a contest for a seat in the upper chamber of the National Assembly in one of the States in the Middle Belt of Nigeria in the 2015 general elections. A subsequent petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission by some non-governmental organisations for an investigation into the clip and its contents ultimately yielded little.

The principal characters in the dramatic sound clip have since gone on to prosper in a fashion that Nigeria uniquely makes possible. After being eventually removed from his seat, the distinguished Senator opted to read for a law degree. The contents of the sound clip were not an issue when, in July 2025, the Body of Benchers admitted him to the Nigerian Bar, and then the Supreme Court enrolled him to practise as a lawyer in the country.

In February 2021, the judge widely alleged to be the voice in the sound clip rose to become the Chief Judge of a State High Court in one of the six states of the Niger Delta.

It appears the daughter mentioned in the clip eventually got the promised job. Her career as a State Counsel prospered in meteoric fashion. Thirteen years into her legal career, in the last quarter of 2025, she got promoted to an Assistant Director in the Ministry of Justice. In the second week of January 2026, she will visit Abuja, where a committee of the National Judicial Council (NJC) presided over by a senior Justice of the Supreme Court will interview her for the highly coveted position of a seat on the Bench of the Federal High Court. She goes in with insider advantage against a candidate ten years her senior at the bar and who, it seems, was actually ahead of her on merit.

That seat is one of 14 judicial vacancies in the Federal High Court to be filled in the first quarter of 2026. In all, the NJC Committee is reportedly scheduled to interview 28 candidates over a period of three days. Twenty-four of the candidates are from twelve states and territories in Nigeria, namely: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Enugu, Imo, Kaduna, Kwara, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Zamfara, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The NJC Committee will include at least two retired Justices of the Supreme Court; a retired Justice of the Court of Appeal; the current president of the Nigerian Bar Association, and one of his more recent predecessors. The Committee will also interview four candidates from Nasarawa State, which has two vacancies.

The Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) did the shortlisting for the 28 candidates. That stage of the process involved, among other evaluations, a computer-based test (CBT) and an aptitude test, in relation to both of which each candidate is scored, but the scores are not published. It is no surprise that such an opaque process lends itself to controversy around three issues.

First, some “unsuccessful” candidates have accused “judicial authorities of manipulating the results and shortlisting candidates who allegedly failed the qualifying examination.” It is claimed that some of the candidates on the final shortlist of 28 scored as low as 30% or even 25%. One person alleged specifically that “the name of the person who scored the highest in the test was excluded from the list”, claiming that the person was a candidate from a state in south-east Nigeria. This will not be the first time that such an allegation has been made in relation to judicial appointments to the Federal High Court. As long as the FJSC and the NJC remain unwilling to publish the scores of all the candidates, it is impossible to discount these allegations.  

Second, at its 108th meeting on 29-30 April 2025, the NJC decided that “henceforth, the FJSC, all judicial Service Commissions or Committee of the FCT, shall publish the names of all candidates recommended for judicial appointments. The primary objective of this initiative is to solicit comments from the general public regarding the integrity, reputation, and suitability of these candidates for judicial office.”

At the time, this seemed impressive. In reality, it was a sleight of hand. The grounds for public input at this impractical stage, defined by the NJC, are limited to issues of “integrity, reputation and suitability” of the recommended candidates. But if a decision has been made to recommend a candidate, then these issues would already have been considered. In effect, by the time a candidate is “recommended” for judicial office, the effective opportunities for public objection have in fact been foreclosed.

Third, therefore, the only viable ground at this stage for objection to the process would be the integrity of the appointment process itself. This is arguably the most important issue engaged by this present appointment round into the Federal High Court Bench. Rule 11(iv) of the Judicial Code of Conduct requires that “in the exercise of his administrative duties, a Judicial Officer should avoid nepotism and favouritism.”

Yet, it is difficult not to look upon the shortlist of candidates that the NJC committee will be interviewing next month as anything other than an advertisement of nepotism and favouritism. The list is rich with children or candidates of serving or retired senior judges, some of them involved in the process.

The judicial daughter mentioned earlier in this piece is by no means the only insider on the list. The candidate to be appointed from Kaduna State, for instance, is guaranteed to be a second-generation judge; both candidates to be interviewed from the state are scions of former judges. Of the two candidates from Abia State, one is the child of a serving judge.

Akwa Ibom State also features a preferred candidate who works with and is adopted by a serving senior judge who may himself even be involved in the interview process. Taraba State has a similar story, and these are just random examples.

This pattern populates the entire shortlist without disguise or shame.

Humanity elsewhere does not know a thing like the judicial gene. It only exists in Nigeria. One tweep describes what passes for the judicial appointment process in Nigeria as “filiality via conjugality.”

It seems evident that Nigeria’s process of judicial appointments has become largely performative, rigged to the pre-determined end of injecting children into judicial hereditaments occupied or recently vacated by their parents or patrons. Rather perversely, the so-called reform decided upon by the NJC in April 2025 of publishing the names of candidates “recommended” for judicial office is designed entirely to lend legitimacy to a pre-determined process in clear violation of the Judicial Code of Conduct.

The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) has an opportunity in this present round of hires to the Federal High Court Bench to course-correct. As a first step, she should publish the scores of all candidates throughout the process. That will reassure the public about her commitment to liberating judicial appointments in Nigeria from continuing abduction by the forces of capture, conjugality and abuse of power.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

By Edwin Nwachukwu

Lenders Consult International Limited is widely recognised as the founder and lead organiser of the Nigeria Pitch Awards, acknowledged as Nigeria’s longest-running football awards programme. 

The company’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Shina Philips, is also a FIFA-licensed football agent. As a responsible corporate organisation, the firm has consistently maintained a cordial relationship with the media since the launch of the Nigeria Pitch Awards at a world press conference in 2011.

Driven by Dr. Philips’ strong belief in capacity building across all sectors, the company later initiated a collaboration with the Nigeria Police Force by proposing the organisation of an annual Conference and Retreat for Senior Police Officers. The initiative was conceived as part of efforts to support professional development and strengthen capacity within the force.

As part of the proposal, Lenders Consult International Limited undertook to approach potential sponsors to fund the conference and retreat. Recognising the potential benefits of such a gathering of senior police officers, the proposal was formally approved, and the programme has been operational since 2019.

The retreat provides a platform for officers from the rank of Commissioner of Police and above to engage in peer review, share ideas, and deliberate on strategies for addressing policing and security challenges. The maiden edition of the conference was held in 2019, with the Lagos State Government serving as host sponsor. 

The event was declared open by the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented by the then Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo. Following the success of the inaugural edition, subsequent conferences were held in Uyo in February 2022 and later in Owerri between 2022 and 2024, while the 2025 edition took place in Abeokuta.

For four years, the company successfully organised the annual Conference and Retreat, maintaining that it never received funding from the Nigeria Police Force to host the event. Instead, it remained a private initiative designed to support the police. As a corporate organisation, Lenders Consult International Limited worked tirelessly to sustain the conference, even when sponsorship funds were insufficient to cover the full cost of organising the event.

According to the company, the Conference and Retreat has served as a catalyst for police transformation and reform. One of its notable outcomes is the establishment of the Police Institute in Abuja.

Building on the success of the conference, the firm later proposed the creation of the annual Nigeria Police Awards and Commendations to recognise and celebrate outstanding officers within the force. Two editions of the awards have already been held in 2024 and 2025 in Abuja, fully sponsored by the company and its partners.

Over the years, Dr. Shina Philips has maintained a longstanding professional relationship with senior police officers through various initiatives. 

This relationship led to his appointment as a consultant to the Nigeria Police in 2020, where he was tasked with coordinating activities for Police Week 2020. However, the event was later cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since his appointment, Dr. Philips has continued to support several police initiatives without receiving payment. In some cases, official trips he undertook alongside the immediate past Inspector-General of Police were self-funded.

Dr. Shina Philips holds the Nigeria Police in high regard and remains committed to partnering with the force to strengthen its capacity and support its mission of effectively policing Nigeria.

By Kunle Oshobi

There is a moment in the life of every democracy when the mask slips, when those in power stop pretending to serve the people and openly design the system to serve themselves. Nigeria reached that moment on February 18, 2026, when President Bola Tinubu signed the Electoral Act 2026 into law. What was marketed as a reform is, in truth, a blueprint for manipulation.

The story begins with a straightforward demand from Nigerians: make the real-time electronic transmission of election results from polling units to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) mandatory, without exception. It was not a radical demand. Kenya, Brazil, and India already transmit election results electronically. Nigeria’s own telecoms operators, through ALTON, confirmed that even 2G networks are capable of handling the small data packets required to upload results. The technology exists. The infrastructure exists. The only thing missing was political will, and that absence was deliberate.

The House of Representatives, to its initial credit, passed a bill in December 2025 mandating compulsory real-time electronic uploads, requiring presiding officers to upload results via the IReV portal after signing and stamping Form EC8A. It was a clear, unambiguous provision. Then the Senate gutted it. The new Senate version allows both manual and electronic transmission of results but removes explicit reference to “real-time” uploads from polling units. The Senate’s excuse? Poor network coverage and inadequate electricity in rural areas.

This is an insult to Nigerians’ intelligence. The country’s telecommunications operators have publicly stated that network coverage is sufficient. More tellingly, manipulation between polling units and collation centres before transmission is a recurring abuse in Nigerian elections, precisely the window that manual fallback options keep wide open. The “communication failure” caveat in the new law is not a concession to infrastructure reality; it is an engineered escape hatch for electoral thieves.

Faced with public rage and street protests, 55 senators nonetheless voted to retain manual transmission where the network fails, with only 15 opposing. Then, in a scene that exposed the depth of this conspiracy, the House of Representatives caved in and adopted the Senate version, despite a voice vote that appeared to favour the opposing side. The Speaker simply ruled in favour of the ruling APC’s position and moved on. Opposition lawmakers staged a walkout. Outside, police fired tear gas at peaceful protesters, including women and elderly citizens who had gathered to demand that their votes be protected.

Activist Omoyele Sowore described the police action as a declaration of war on Nigerians and on participatory democracy. He was right. When a government deploys security forces against citizens demanding electoral transparency, it reveals everything about its intentions.

The ruling APC controls both the executive and the legislature. The President who benefits most from a compromised electoral law is the same one who signed it into law hours after it was passed. This is not coincidence. It is coordination.

And for those who might counsel patience and faith in INEC or the judiciary, the evidence offers no comfort. In 2023, INEC promised during electioneering that results would be transmitted electronically in real-time via IReV. That promise was broken on election day. Results were not transmitted as pledged, and the irregularities that followed were glaring. The judiciary relied on Section 60 to approve the 2023 presidential polls after INEC failed to transmit the results to the IReV as promised. The courts, rather than holding INEC accountable for its own stated standards, ratified the breach. INEC failed the people. The courts covered for INEC. The full circle of institutional failure was complete.

There is no reason to believe 2027 will be different. INEC remains populated by appointees who serve at the pleasure of those in power. The courts have demonstrated, in election after election, a remarkable appetite for validating results that independent observers have questioned. The new Electoral Act, with its “dual transmission” framework and its built-in ambiguity around when manual collation can override electronic results, hands electoral manipulators exactly the legal fog they need to operate in.

The dual transmission system is confusing, contentious, and dangerously prone to fraud, manipulation, and endless litigation. It virtually guarantees that the 2027 elections will again end not at the ballot box, but in courtrooms, where, as history has shown, justice is a luxury Nigerians cannot afford.

The people are not fooled. The protests outside the National Assembly, the walkouts by opposition lawmakers, and the condemnations from civil society groups like Yiaga Africa and Enough is Enough Nigeria all reflect a citizenry that understands what is happening. The electoral law has not been reformed. It has been re-armed, loaded with loopholes, and aimed squarely at the Nigerian voter.

2027 is not just an election. It is a test of whether Nigeria’s democracy is retrievable. Right now, the evidence suggests that those in power are determined to answer that question with a resounding “no.” The people must prove them wrong, in the streets, at the ballot box, and in every space where power can still be contested.

Because if Nigerians do not fight for their votes now, there will be nothing left to fight for later.

Kunle Oshobi is the Head of Strategy and Planning of the Narrative Force.

By Kunle Oshobi

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s controversial tax reform bills have dominated national discourse in recent weeks, with the administration emphasizing increased revenue collection as the pathway to national development.

While the President frequently touts his record of increasing Lagos State’s internally generated revenue during his tenure as governor (1999-2007), there is a crucial element of that success story he consistently omits: the national economic boom engineered by the Obasanjo-Atiku administration, which created the foundation for revenue growth across Nigeria, particularly in Lagos as the nation’s commercial hub.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Lagos’s Revenue Growth

Between 1999 and 2007, Lagos State’s IGR grew from approximately N14.6 billion annually to N83 billion, a remarkable increase that President Tinubu rightly celebrates. However, this growth did not occur in a vacuum. During this same period, Nigeria was experiencing its fastest economic growth since independence, with GDP expanding rapidly and the economy becoming one of the fastest-growing in Africa and the world.

At the helm of this economic transformation was Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who served as Chairman of the National Economic Council, the constitutional body responsible for coordinating economic policy across the federation. Under his leadership, and working alongside President Obasanjo, the administration implemented comprehensive reforms that liberalized key sectors, privatized moribund state enterprises, recapitalized the banking sector, revolutionized telecommunications, established pension reforms, and attracted unprecedented foreign investment, amongst several other policies that stimulated economic growth.

The Real Driver of Revenue Growth

The inconvenient reality is that over 70% of Lagos State’s IGR derives from personal income tax paid by workers resident in the state. As the Obasanjo-Atiku administration’s economic policies stimulated rapid growth in employment, business formation, and private sector expansion, Lagos, as Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, naturally became the primary beneficiary. Companies expanded, new businesses emerged, jobs multiplied, and with them came increased tax revenues.

The telecommunications revolution alone, which saw mobile phone lines grow from 400,000 in 1999 to over 100 million by 2007, created hundreds of thousands of jobs. The banking sector recapitalization transformed Nigerian banks into regional powerhouses, generating employment and economic activity concentrated largely in Lagos. Privatization of public enterprises injected efficiency into the economy and freed up capital for productive investment. The negotiated debt relief that reduced Nigeria’s external debt from $35 billion to manageable levels improved the nation’s credit rating and attracted foreign investment.

These were not Lagos State initiatives. These were federal government policies championed by the National Economic Council under Atiku Abubakar’s chairmanship, and they created the rising economic tide that lifted Lagos’s revenue boat along with boats across Nigeria.

The Irony of Current Policy Direction

Today, as President of Nigeria, Tinubu faces an economy battered by high inflation, massive unemployment, currency devaluation, and widespread poverty. Yet rather than focusing primarily on growth-oriented economic reforms similar to those that indirectly benefited his Lagos administration, his government has prioritized aggressive revenue extraction through controversial tax reforms.
The irony is profound: Tinubu credits himself for Lagos’s revenue success while ignoring that it was built on the foundation of national economic growth policies led by his current political rival, Atiku Abubakar. Now, rather than emulating that growth-first approach, his administration pursues a taxation-first strategy at a time when Nigerians are least able to bear additional burdens.

Tax Revenue Follows Economic Growth, Not Vice Versa

Economic history demonstrates repeatedly that sustainable revenue growth follows from economic expansion, not aggressive taxation of a stagnant economy. When businesses thrive, when employment increases, when incomes rise, tax revenues naturally follow. Company income taxes increase as businesses become profitable. Personal income taxes grow as more people find employment and existing workers earn better wages. Value-added tax revenues expand as consumption increases with rising prosperity.

The Obasanjo-Atiku era proves this point conclusively. By focusing on:

• Creating an enabling environment for business
• Attracting foreign investment through sound macroeconomic policies
• Liberalizing critical sectors
• Building institutions to fight corruption
• Investing in infrastructure
• Reforming the financial sector
  They achieved both economic growth and increased government revenues. Lagos State collected more taxes not primarily because of better collection mechanisms, but because there were more economically active people and businesses to tax.

Lessons President Tinubu Must learn
President Tinubu should look beyond partisan politics to recognize what truly drove Nigeria’s economic success during his tenure as Lagos governor. Atiku Abubakar, as Chairman of the National Economic Council, played the leading role in implementing the economic policies that created jobs, stimulated growth, and consequently generated the tax revenues Lagos collected.

If Tinubu genuinely wants to replicate Lagos’s revenue success at the federal level, he must first replicate the growth-oriented economic policies of the Obasanjo-Atiku era. This means:

1. Prioritizing Economic Growth Over Revenue Extraction Focus on creating an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, rather than imposing additional tax burdens on an already struggling population.
2. Implementing Structural Reforms Invest in infrastructure, power, transportation, and telecommunications to reduce the cost of doing business and enhance productivity.
3. Attracting Investment Create stable macroeconomic conditions, ensure policy consistency, and build investor confidence to attract both domestic and foreign capital.
4. Building Productive Capacity Support agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors to create employment and increase the productive base of the economy.
5. Fighting Corruption Through Institutions Strengthen anti-corruption agencies and ensure transparent, accountable governance that gives citizens confidence in government.
6. Liberalizing Key Sectors Open up sectors monopolized by inefficient state actors to private sector competition and innovation.

The Path Forward

Nigeria’s current economic challenges require a growth-first approach, not a taxation-first strategy. The tax reform bills, regardless of their technical merits, arrive at a moment when millions of Nigerians are struggling with unprecedented economic hardship. Imposing additional burdens on citizens and businesses now risks stifling the very economic activity needed to generate sustainable revenue growth.

President Tinubu should demonstrate the humility to learn from the success of his predecessors, even his political rivals. Atiku Abubakar’s chairmanship of the National Economic Council during Nigeria’s fastest economic growth period offers a blueprint for sustainable revenue generation through economic expansion.
The lesson is clear: grow the economy first, and tax revenues will follow. Tax an impoverished population aggressively, and you deepen poverty while strangling growth.

If President Tinubu truly wants to be remembered as the leader who transformed Nigeria’s economy, he should borrow a leaf from the Obasanjo-Atiku playbook and focus his considerable political capital on policies that expand the economic pie, rather than extracting bigger slices from an already diminished pie.

The choice is his: will he pursue the proven path of growth-driven revenue expansion, or persist with the politically expedient but economically counterproductive approach of taxing hardship? Nigeria’s future prosperity hangs in the balance.

Kunle Oshobi is the Head of Strategy and Planning of The Narrative Force.

By Paul Ejime

Madam Davidetta Browne-Lansanah, Chairperson of Liberia’s National Elections Commission (NEC),  has announced her resignation effective 15th March 2026, about a year before the expiry of her tenure in April 2027.

A veteran broadcast journalist with public administration experience, including a stint in the UN system before joining NEC 11 years ago as a commissioner, Browne-Lansanah delivered Liberia’s widely acclaimed general elections in October 2023.
 
She served as Co-Chair and Acting Chair before assuming the substantive position as NEC’s fifth Chairperson in 2020, pledging to “strengthen the Commission’s core values of independence, integrity, professionalism and consistency.”
 
Her leadership style resonates strongly across the ECOWAS region, which is grappling with insecurity, resurgence of military incursions in politics, manipulated elections, and poor governance.
 
Three of the four member states of the 15-nation organisation, ruled by the military, have left to form the Alliance of Shael States, AES, with Liberia, Senegal and Ghana holding up some hope for the survival of electoral democracy in the politically restive region.
 
Liberia’s NEC is no stranger to controversies. In 2011, James Fromayan, one of Madam Browne-Lansanah’s predecessors, was forced to step down after being accused of bias by the then-opposition leader George Weah. The same George Weah, as President, appointed Madam Browne-Lansanah as NEC Chair in April 2020 and lost his re-election bid in the 2023 elections conducted by her.
 
“I have done my best,” Madam Browne-Lansanah told this writer in a telephone chat on Saturday, 14th March. “I want to focus on my family as a single mother,” she added.
 
Since assuming leadership of the NEC, Madam Browne-Lansanah has faced a running battle with some of her commissioner colleagues, suspected of acting on behalf of politically exposed persons to undermine her position.
 
Last year, she was accused of “unilaterally announcing the closure of the NEC office for one month and dismissing 25 employees (for insubordination) without the knowledge or approval of the NEC Board of Commissioners, as required by law.” 
 
This led to protests by some employees at the NEC headquarters in Monrovia and resulted in her suspension in January 2025 by the government of President Joseph Boakai. The government reinstated her one month later.
 
In lifting her suspension, the president expressed the hope that the “uncertainty surrounding the NEC has been addressed, clearing the way for the smooth conduct of (then) upcoming Nimba County by-election to fill the vacancy left as a result of the passing of Senator Prince Yormie Johnson.”
 
However, NEC’s internal wrangling and alleged external interference continued, culminating in Madam Browne-Lansanah’s sudden resignation, which she first announced on Thursday during a tour of the ongoing renovation of the NEC’s headquarters in Monrovia.

She told the media and development partners: “I have conveyed this (decision) to the President’s Office, and I await to hear from him. It is time to move on and give any other person the opportunity to run the Elections Commission.”

“I am happy because I have done my best,” she added.

Informed sources link her sudden resignation to “mounting pressure” following an undisclosed audit report that allegedly raised concerns about administrative and financial practices at NEC.

A major source of disagreement during her tenure was the procurement of biometric voter registration equipment before the 2023 elections.

Independent observers believe Madam Browne-Lansanah “is targeted for being professional and refusing to bend rules.”

The NEC was part of the 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Liberia’s 14-year civil war. It replaced the 1986 Elections Commission as “an autonomous government institution, independent of any branch of government with powers to run elections in Liberia.”

But as with many other electoral umpires in Africa, political pressure and interference by sitting governments often undermine the electoral process and the independence of the so-called independent/autonomous electoral Commissions, thereby contributing to flawed elections.

Liberia’s next general elections are in October 2029. Madam Browne-Lansanah has done her part with a strong track record; it remains to be seen what her successor will bring.

*Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Strategic Governance Communication

By Alex Vines

Africa’s political and economic outlook in 2026 is defined less by crisis than by contradiction. Fewer elections are scheduled than in 2025, yet democratic choice continues to narrow where voters do go to the polls.

Economic growth is set to accelerate in pockets, even as debt, unemployment and inequality tighten their grip. The continent’s global relevance is rising just as internal fragmentation deepens.

Ballots under strain

Across the continent, 10 national polls are scheduled in 2026, including Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Zambia, though in many cases, voting is expected to legitimise incumbents rather than enable genuine political competition.

In Ethiopia, elections due in June are likely to entrench one-party dominance under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party, with insecurity in Amhara, Oromia and Tigray limiting participation and opposition boycotts narrowing voter choice.

Uganda’s January election is expected to extend President Yoweri Museveni’s rule amid continued restrictions on opposition activity, while Somalia’s planned polls face uncertainty driven by electoral disputes, federal tensions and al-Shabaab attacks.

The common thread is a widening gap between electoral form and political substance, pushing political pressure beyond the ballot box.

Wars that refuse to end

If elections are one axis of instability, armed conflict is the other. Several of Africa’s major wars show little sign of resolution and, in some cases, risk converging into wider regional crises.

Sudan’s civil war, now in its third year, continues to devastate the country. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has intensified in Kordofan and Darfur as mediation efforts stall.

External actors continue to supply arms and neither side appears willing to accept a settlement that would restore civilian rule. The humanitarian toll is catastrophic, with spillover effects spreading across the Horn of Africa.

South Sudan is again on the brink following the collapse of the power-sharing agreement between President Salva Kiir and Deputy President Riek Machar. Kiir’s consolidation of power has raised the risk of renewed war, with cross-border links between armed factions deepening instability.

The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo remains another unresolved flashpoint. Fighting with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels persists despite diplomatic efforts, underscoring a broader pattern: Africa’s wars are being managed, not ended.

Coup contagion and managed instability

Beyond active war zones, political instability continues to ripple across the Sahel and parts of West Africa. Military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, now operating under the Alliance of Sahel States, remain locked in confrontation with regional bodies and Western partners, while jihadist violence linked to Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and Islamic State–Sahel Province has intensified.

Even in countries not under military rule, the precedent of unconstitutional power grabs has altered political calculations. Leaders hedge against electoral risk by weakening institutions in advance, while opposition movements increasingly doubt that ballots alone can shift entrenched power.

The result is a drift toward what might be called “managed instability”: regimes that are neither fully authoritarian nor meaningfully democratic, presiding over fragile security environments and ruling through a mix of coercion, patronage and procedural legitimacy.

Growth returns – on fragile foundations

Against this political backdrop, Africa’s economic story in 2026 appears more upbeat. The International Monetary Fund projects that the continent will host high-growth economies -expanding at 6% or more – ahead of any other region globally, with East and West Africa leading on the back of post-conflict recoveries, commodity exports and reform momentum.

South Sudan and Guinea top the growth rankings,driven by oil and mining respectively, while Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia benefit from infrastructure investment and services expansion. Côte d’Ivoire and Benin continue to strengthen their roles as regional trade hubs.

Yet beneath the headline figures lies a harsher reality. Much of this growth is narrow, externally exposed and weak on job creation, leaving millions of young Africans with little immediate relief.

Debt as the binding constraint

Debt is the single most constraining variable shaping policy space in 2026. African countries are expected to pay close to $95 billion to creditors this year, diverting scarce resources away from health, education and infrastructure. In countries such as Kenya, debt servicing now absorbs roughly a fifth of government spending.

The risk of further debt distress is rising, particularly in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tunisia and Zambia, all of which face acute refinancing pressures. While hopes are pinned on lower global interest rates, relief is far from guaranteed.

Debt restructuring remains slow, fragmented and politically costly, with private creditors often resisting meaningful concessions.

The planned launch of an Africa Credit Rating Agency in 2026 reflects growing frustration with what policymakers see as systemic bias in global credit assessments that inflate borrowing costs. Whether the initiative can materially shift investor perceptions remains uncertain, but it signals a broader push for financial and policy sovereignty.

Critical minerals and contested corridors

One area where Africa’s global leverage is undeniably increasing is in critical minerals. As competition intensifies over inputs essential to the energy transition – including copper, cobalt, manganese and lithium – African producers have gained new strategic importance.

Governments are increasingly insisting on local value addition, seeking to move beyond raw extraction toward processing and manufacturing. While progress is uneven and capacity constraints remain severe, local-content requirements are reshaping investment terms and supply-chain strategies.

This resource competition is also geopolitical. Gulf investors continue to expand their footprint in African mining, China remains deeply embedded across extraction and infrastructure, and Western governments are scrambling to secure supply outside rival blocs. At the same time, US protectionism and European climate regulations – including the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism – are forcing African governments to rethink trade alignments and industrial policy.

Power shortages and climate pressure

Industrial ambitions face a stubborn obstacle: electricity. Despite new investments, large parts of Central and East Africa remain among the least electrified regions globally. Unreliable power continues to stifle manufacturing, raise costs for businesses and limit job creation.

Climate shocks – floods, droughts and heatwaves – compound the challenges, forcing governments to prioritise short-term adaptation over long-term transformation. Renewable energy investment is rising, slowly, and financing gaps remain vast.

The African Development Bank estimates the continent needs an additional US$108 billion annually to meet infrastructure needs. Without addressing the bottlenecks, growth risks plateauing.

A low point –  and a pivot?

Taken together, 2026 may mark a low point for African democracy, but not necessarily its endpoint. While many elections will be tightly managed, pockets of genuine political competition persist – notably in Zambia and Cape Verde – and in several countries’ civil society, courts and independent media continue to place limits on executive power where space remains.

Heightened geopolitical rivalry offers African states greater scope to assert agency, even as it subjects them to new pressures. A crowded diplomatic calendar in 2026 – including the France-Africa summit in Nairobi, the Turkey-Africa Summit in Libya, the Russia-Africa summit in Equatorial Guinea and a second Italy-Africa summit – underscores the continent’s rising strategic weight. Governments able to balance competing partnerships and extract concrete concessions stand to gain, but the margins for miscalculation are narrowing.

For Africa’s youthful population, however, patience is wearing thin. Growth without jobs, elections without choice and peace processes without peace form a combustible mix. The defining question of 2026 is whether political and economic systems can absorb popular demands through reform – or whether Africa’s brittle equilibrium will fracture under the weight of unmet expectations.

Dr Alex Vines is the Africa Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Until recently, he held a similar role at Chatham House in London. This article first appeared in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Twenty-three days after its transmission by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the upper chamber of Nigeria’s National Assembly, the Senate, held public hearings on 18 December 2025 to consider the Legal Practitioners Bill. At this pace, the bill could become law well before the middle of 2026.

The journey to this bill has been somewhat tortured. The last time there was any meaningful legislative action on the regulation of the legal profession in Nigeria, the military was in power and that was over 50 years ago. The existing framework governing Nigeria’s legal profession has in fact evolved very little since the Legal Practitioners Act was first enacted two years after independence in 1962. Long before the onset of this millennium, it was evident that the design and regulation of Nigeria’s legal profession needed a review. Substantial disagreements, however, existed on how to accomplish this.
In December 2016, then president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Abubakar Balarabe (AB) Mahmoud, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), constituted a Legal Practitioners Regulation Review Committee under the leadership of Anthony Idigbe, SAN, with a mandate to undertake consultations and rationalize proposals for the reform and regulation of Nigeria’s legal profession. As part of its work, the Idigbe Committee took soundings from the official legal profession and from branches of the NBA. The Committee comprised entirely of lawyers and, in its work, appeared to make little effort to reach out to or consult with consumers of legal services. That was a significant flaw in its process.

Upon receiving the committee’s report, the president of the NBA then set out the desired goals and ambitions of the reform he sought: “We need a legal profession” he declared, “that will inspire confidence in the Nigerian legal system such that entrepreneurship will thrive and foreigners will feel confident to invest in our country thereby generating prosperity for our people.” He complained that – afflicted as it was by chronically incapable regulation – “the Nigerian Bar Association as presently structured and managed cannot provide that leadership expected to produce these outcomes.”

For nearly two decades preceding the Idigbe Committee Report and immediately thereafter, the NBA had been led by SANs. In 2020, the membership of the association elected Olumide Akpata to lead it. An exceptional and able lawyer, Olumide made his name at the commercial Bar. It is fair to say that some traditionalists took personal affront at his election to lead the Bar.

Any hopes for a quick dash to translate into legislative reality the lofty dreams inspired by the Idigbe Committee Report were to be quickly frustrated by an internecine contest that ensued of egos and interests too complex to be rehashed here. As the contest unfolded, the original proposals of the Idigbe Committee vegetated; then mutated, before getting annihilated.

It appears that some interests within the Body of Benchers (BoB) decided in the flux to capture the profession. Much of the contest that followed over the future of the regulatory proposals was to occur within the BoB. A statutory body created by the existing Legal Practitioners Act, the BoB is described under law as “a body of legal practitioners of the highest distinction” in Nigeria, responsible for admitting new entrants into the legal profession.

While the BoB sought to subordinate to itself the NBA and all other organs for the regulation of the Legal Profession, the NBA sought to argue for its independence as the professional association of lawyers in Nigeria. As this argument raged, some interests instigated a contest over the assertion of associational monopolies by the NBA with the emergence of a Nigerian Law Society (NLS), in effect, forcing the NBA to battle on two fronts for its own survival.

These contests were still ongoing when in 2023, Nigeria elected a new President.

Leading protagonists in the BoB, who were also counsel to the new president, acquired presidential leverage in the battle to shape the new regulatory environment.
With the strategic landscape thus redefined, the NBA was left to seek tactical accommodation in shaping the content of the new Bill, with a focus on preserving its considerable revenue streams.

The original ambitions outlined in 2018 for a radical reinvention of Nigeria’s legal profession suffered a tragic stillbirth.

Among its eight objectives, the bill proposes to advance public confidence in legal services; promote the public interest, rule of law and access to justice; and, above all, “ensure the independence, integrity and honour of members of the legal profession.”
There is, however, a clear mismatch between the essential proposals of the Bill and these high-sounding objectives.

For starters, about half of the bill is devoted to provisions for a revamped Body of Benchers, which emerges from these proposals as a supreme regulator – if not owner – of Nigeria’s legal profession. If these proposals become law, the provisions of the bill governing the BoB will prove to be the cemetery of Nigeria’s legal profession.

Far from being a guarantor of an independent Bar, the BoB created by this Bill is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ruling government. It will be funded by the Federal Government through the National Judicial Council. Among its membership, the BoB will include the Chief Justice of Nigeria; Attorney-General of the Federation; all Justices of the Supreme Court; President of the Court of Appeal and Presiding Justices of divisions of the Court of Appeal; Chief Judge of the Federal High Court and of all state High Courts (and the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory); President of the National Industrial Court; all State Attorneys-General; as well as the President of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chairs of Judiciary Committee in both chambers of the National Assembly if they have been lawyers for at least 15 years. The NBA’s representation in the Body will be 61, comprising its president and 60 other lawyers nominated by its National Executive Committee. It will be a no-contest.

Second, the BoB will be responsible not merely for admission into the legal profession but also for discipline. So, the body will subsume the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC). Members of the Body will become, in typical Nigerian fashion, above discipline.

Third, to underscore the supremacy of the BoB, the bill now proposes that the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) can only make, retain or review rules and criteria for conferment of the rank of SAN, including any conditions for withdrawal of the rank, “with the approval of the Body of Benchers.”

Fourth, in a specific act of legislative reprisal, the new bill excludes from the LPPC, the President of the NBA, until now a member of the LPPC, which determines the conferment of the rank of SAN, unless he or she is a SAN. This provision is a specific reprisal against the NBA for electing in 2020 a president who was not a SAN. For that reason, this provision may, in time, become known as the “Olumide Akpata Reprisal”.

Fifth, the ambitions of the bill venture into the impossible. In addition to regulating the practice of law in Nigeria, it also purports to reserve for Nigerian lawyers only legal services in relation to any matter of Nigerian law, or in relation to any dispute or transaction with substantial nexus to Nigeria. Implicitly, the bill asserts extra-territorial effect. It is hard to see how that can work.

The bill contains other significant provisions, such as the requirement for mandatory pupillage of up to two years for new lawyers or for licensing of foreign lawyers. Even the provision concerning foreign lawyers is tone-deaf. It defines a foreign lawyer as “a person entitled to practice law in a foreign jurisdiction.” By this bill, a Nigerian lawyer qualified in another jurisdiction is considered foreign.

Admirable though its original goals were, Nigeria’s new Legal Practitioners Bill has suffered predictable derailment. If it gets adopted in its present form, the new law will be a shrine to institutional capture. Its main achievement will be to create in members of the Body of Benches a new breed of super lawyers. The currency of their trade will be influence peddling, the very antithesis of what the effort to reform the Legal Practitioners Act was meant to be.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B

There are moments in a nation’s life when laughter ceases to be amusement and becomes indictment. Nigeria has reached such a moment.

What is unfolding under the All Progressives Congress is not governance in its classical sense, but theatre without discipline, spectacle without substance, and motion without direction. It is, in the most unforgiving philosophical sense, a comedy whose jokes are paid for with human suffering. What was once marketed as “renewed hope” has mutated into renewed hardship, normalised scarcity, and institutionalised pain.

W. E. B. Du Bois once warned that “the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” Nigeria today is paying that higher price. Not with chains or decrees, but with hunger, confusion, and the silent erosion of dignity. Du Bois understood what Tinubu’s government appears incapable of grasping, that leadership is not measured by activity, but by moral clarity and social consequence. In societies where power loses its ethical compass, policy becomes a weapon and economics becomes a tool of quiet domination.

From Buhari’s lethargic fumbling to Tinubu’s frenetic improvisation, the APC era reads like a badly rehearsed farce. One act collapses into another. Promises trip over themselves. Announcements arrive before thought, and decisions precede comprehension. Tinubu did not inherit a broken stage; he inherited a fragile audience, yet chose to govern as though the people were expendable extras in his production.

The cumulative effect is exhaustion, civic fatigue, and a growing awareness that confusion itself has become a governing strategy.

Entering office as a self-styled master strategist, Tinubu has instead perfected the politics of approximation. Almost fixing the economy. Almost stabilising the naira. Almost attracting investment. Almost governing. Each “almost” has become policy. Each delay has been baptised as courage. Each failure rebranded as sacrifice. This culture of “nearly” has consequences, because citizens cannot eat intentions, cannot commute on announcements, and cannot survive on speeches.

Where coherent reform was required, what emerged instead was extraction. In place of thoughtful economic restructuring came a blizzard of taxes, levies, tariffs, and fiscal ambushes that transformed survival itself into a taxable offence. Nigerians were not consulted; they were charged. Fuel costs bled into transport fares. Transport fares into food prices. Food prices into hunger.

Electricity tariffs rose in a country where power supply remains erratic. Customs duties multiplied while local industries suffocated. The ordinary citizen became the easiest revenue source for a government too timid to confront waste and corruption at the top. Even the informal sector, once a refuge of resilience, has been dragged into the tax net without protection or support.

Here lies the cruelty at the heart of Tinubu’s economics. The state expanded its appetite while shrinking its conscience. Taxation ceased to be a social contract and became punishment.

A punishment imposed without public value, without infrastructure relief, without social cushioning, without empathy. What kind of leadership widens the tax net while the economic floor collapses beneath the people? What kind of government audits the poor daily while shielding privilege behind policy jargon? In this arrangement, pain is democratised, but relief is elitist.

Socrates would have asked a devastatingly simple question, what is the purpose of the state? To organise collective welfare, or to professionalise suffering? Tinubu’s Nigeria answers without shame. New levies arrive weekly, digital taxes, consumption taxes, excise duties, while wages stagnate, jobs evaporate, and inflation gallops unchecked. Hunger has become the most consistent government auditor. It keeps perfect records, counts every failure, and spares no household.

Grace Paley once observed, in her quiet but lethal prose, that politicians love to speak endlessly about the future while refusing responsibility for the present. Tinubu’s presidency lives inside that sentence. Nigerians are drowning in the present while being lectured about tomorrow. Hope has been deferred so often that it has begun to rot into resentment.

Alongside economic suffocation came deepening insecurity. Farmers abandoned their fields. Food scarcity worsened. Small traders were punished by exchange-rate volatility they neither caused nor understood.

The naira became a moving target, and explanations always arrived after the damage had been done. Each intervention contradicted the last, reinforcing a governing habit, act first, explain later, apologise never. Insecurity and inflation now reinforce each other in a vicious loop that policy seems unable, or unwilling, to break.

The removal of fuel subsidy was announced with theatrical bravado but executed with administrative recklessness. No transport buffers. No food stabilisation.

No wage recalibration. Just pain, rapidly distributed and aggressively normalised. This was not reform bravery; it was shock therapy without diagnosis. A government serious about reform would have built cushions before pulling floors away.

The consequences are no longer abstract. Parents now calculate which child eats. Graduates ride motorcycles for survival. Small businesses close under tax pressure while politically connected monopolies flourish untouched. Tinubu’s Nigeria has perfected a perverse redistribution system, upward mobility for the elite, downward pressure for everyone else. Poverty is no longer incidental; it is systemic.

Du Bois warned that systems collapse not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack justice. Grace Paley warned that when leaders speak endlessly of necessity, it is usually the powerless who are sacrificed on its altar. Tinubu’s administration embodies both warnings with chilling precision. What we are witnessing is not a policy accident, but a moral failure unfolding in slow motion.

This is not reform fatigue. It is moral exhaustion. A nation governed like a balance sheet but lived like a graveyard of aspirations. When government wages economic war, the poor always become the frontline casualties.

Comedy may be Tinubu’s strength. Governance is his failure. And a hungry nation cannot eat performances.

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B is the
Director-General, The Narrative Force

By Orimogunje Samuel

The Registered Trustees of the Centre for Community Law (CCL), a Nigeria-based non-governmental organisation, have instituted a suit before the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (CCJ) against key ECOWAS institutions over alleged violations of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty and established appointment procedures.

In Suit No. ECW/CCJ/APP/66/25, dated 29th December 2025, the Centre dragged the Council of Ministers, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, and the President of the ECOWAS Court of Justice before the Court, challenging the process that led to the appointment and swearing-in of Dr Habibu Yaya Bappah as Commissioner for Internal Services at the ECOWAS Commission.

According to the Applicants, the Respondents acted unlawfully and without due regard to the ECOWAS Revised Treaty in the handling of the appointment, particularly while a related matter was already pending before the ECOWAS Court.

Through its counsel, Olufemi Ubose, Esq., the Centre is asking the Court to determine, among other issues, whether it was lawful for the President of the ECOWAS Court of Justice to swear in Dr. Bappah at the instance of the Council of Ministers; whether such action was permissible given that the President of the Court is currently presiding over a case relating to the same office; and whether the appointment complied with the provisions of the Revised Treaty, especially considering that no fresh interview was conducted.

The Applicants contend that Dr. Bappah emerged third in the earlier selection interview, behind Prof. Nazifi Abdullahi Darma, who came first, and Mrs Chizoba Mojekwu, who came second.

Citing the report of the ECOWAS Ad Hoc Ministerial Committee on the Selection and Evaluation of Statutory Appointees, the Centre argues that due process requires that the next highest-ranked candidate be appointed, not the lowest-ranked among shortlisted candidates.

The suit is also anchored on Suit No. ECW/CCJ/APP/54/25 (Prof. Nazifi Abdullahi Darma v. President of ECOWAS Commission), which was filed to challenge Prof. Darma’s removal from office without a hearing.

The Applicants expressed concern that the President of the ECOWAS Court, who is presiding over that matter, went ahead to swear in a successor, an action the Applicants describe as a breach of judicial integrity and a violation of the Court’s governing protocols.

Among the reliefs sought, the Centre is asking the Court to declare the appointment and swearing-in of Dr Bappah unlawful; to hold that the President of the ECOWAS Court violated his oath of office; to rule that the appointment process breached ECOWAS rules on merit-based recruitment; and to order either the appointment of the second-ranked candidate or a fresh interview.

The Applicants also seek guarantees of non-repetition and other consequential orders.

The Centre warned that allowing the Respondents’ actions to stand would further erode public confidence in ECOWAS institutions and undermine the rule of law within the Community.

The suit was filed by Olufemi Ubose, Esq., on behalf of the Centre for Community Law, an organisation committed to promoting and protecting the rights of ECOWAS citizens and upholding the rule of law within the Community.

 
A Public Memo By Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili
 
The wisest and free advice that the Nigerian Senate, as well as the House of Representatives, can receive from all well-meaning citizens of our country now is to know when to stop playing with fire.
 
Nigerians mostly see the Senate as an ignoble and withering institution that delights in deliberate betrayal of public trust. Our lawmakers at large are well known for consistently prioritizing personal and partisan interests over constituent welfare: blocking or watering down reform legislation (electoral reform, anti-corruption measures, constitutional amendments for devolution of power); their selfish custom of inflated budgetary allocations for the legislature while public services collapse; a pattern of confirming clearly unfit nominees for executive positions in exchange for political favours; and several other perfidious actions at the public expense.
 
The Senate (on 4th February 2026) voted against a proposed amendment to make electronic transmission of election results mandatory in the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill and then proceeded to try to deceive Nigerians by claiming that it “did not reject electronic transmission.”
 
What the Senate did… is worse, and their denial is disingenuous. Let us dispense with euphemisms and doublespeak. What the Senators did in that opaque Closed Plenary Session yesterday was retain the critical clause- Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022, specifically subsection (5) with the current wording: “the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot, in a manner as prescribed by the Commission.”
 
By deliberately retaining the vague language that leaves the method and timing of transmitting election results to the discretion of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), rather than requiring real-time uploads from polling units, the Senate has once again weaponized ambiguity in our electoral law.
 
The brazen actions of the Senators were neither an innocent choice nor some sort of technical oversight. It was also not a neutral legislative compromise of “letting sleeping dogs lie,” because there must surely be a few of them who know better, as they are daily in touch with our public reality and the extremely angry mood of the majority of impoverished citizens who are exhausted by corruption and bad governance.
 
Calling a spade a spade, as I am wont to do, the Senators took a calculated decision despite their full knowledge of recent history. No reasonable Nigerian is fooled by the Senate’s shenanigans. Every Nigerian who paid attention to the 2023 general elections knows that the exact clause the Senate deliberately reaffirmed yesterday is there same discretionary loophole that was at the centre of the crisis that terribly eroded public trust and fatally damaged the integrity of our democracy.
 
Real-time electronic transmission from polling units was promised in practice but not enforced in law. When it failed, Nigerians were told to accept “procedural explanations” instead of verifiable outcomes.
 
It was that same clause retained by the Nigerian Senate at their sitting yesterday that created a gap between what Nigerians were repeatedly reassured would happen in the 2023 elections and the fiasco that the law permitted INEC to actually carry out in betrayal of public trust. It was that clause that offered a badly compromised judiciary the opportunity to pronounce a judgment which created confusion, distrust, national tension, and delegitimized the government that was sworn into office.
 
That gap nearly pushed the country into turmoil.
 
For the Senate to now deliberately preserve the same ambiguity, after witnessing its consequences, is an act of grave irresponsibility. When lawmakers reject clear, enforceable safeguards and instead cling to ambiguity, they are not protecting institutions- they are protecting a predetermined outcome.
 
Adding salt to injury, the Senate’s statement that “we did not reject electronic transmission” while refusing to make it mandatory is political sleight of hand. Electronic transmission that is optional, discretionary, and unenforceable is no safeguard at all against the systemic electoral fraud that has plagued our country with a long history of electoral manipulation and weak institutional trust.
 
The Senate knows that “discretion” does not reassure citizens. That is why Nigerians see this Senate vote against a legal mandate for electronic transmission of results for what it is- a willful and deliberate refusal to close the door that was abused in 2023. This action sends a clear signal to Nigerians that lessons from 2023 have been ignored, that transparency is negotiable, and that those in power prefer plausible deniability to democratic certainty.
 
No one is deceived. The Senators must never again insult the intelligence of Nigerians by pretending this is about “INEC’s independence” or “operational flexibility.” Institutional independence does not require opacity, and flexibility should never be a cover for unverifiability. Every serious democracy hardwires clarity, transparency, and compulsion into its electoral laws precisely to protect the system from bad actors- especially those in power in the case of Nigeria.
 
The 2023 elections tested Nigeria’s cohesion.
 
Our country survived not because the system worked well, but because citizens restrained themselves in the face of deep frustration. If future elections are again disputed under the cover of discretionary loopholes, responsibility will be clear.
 
It will lie with those who saw the danger, understood it fully, and chose to plunge Nigerians into it anyway.
 
I am certain that by now the Senators have heard the unified stance of Nigerians on electronic transmission of results since the news of their unpopular decision was published, and will therefore avoid plunging the country into crisis.
 
I am therefore certain that the Nigerian Senate now knows what it must do immediately.
 
Senators, cancel that emergency two-week break announced today, all return to the Red Chamber of the National Assembly complex, and in a broadcast Plenary Session, unanimously pass into law the exact text of the reform that was proposed to the clause on electronic transmission of results.
 
For avoidance of any confusion, here is the exact text of the key proposed provision from the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill: “The presiding officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real time, and such transmission shall be done after the prescribed Form EC8A has been signed and stamped by the presiding officer and, where available, countersigned by candidates or polling unit agents.”
 
It is not wise to play with fire. Transparency is always better.
 
Dr Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, a former Vice President, World Bank, Minister of Education and Solid Minerals, is an Advocate for Transparency, Accountability, Good Governance, and Founder, SPPG – School of Politics, Policy and Governance