In recent days, the United States has begun a major gutting of USAID, the agency responsible for administering foreign aid. Many Americans are celebrating this as a victory—finally, no more taxpayer dollars wasted on countries that, in their view, give nothing back. Elon Musk, the billionaire who only arrived in the U.S. at 24, went as far as calling USAID a “criminal organization,” declaring, “Time for it to die.” Donald Trump has labeled those in the agency as “radical lunatics.” American adversaries, eager to see the U.S. retreat from the global stage, have cheered them on. But the most ecstatic of all are everyday Americans, convinced that their country has been bleeding money for too long on nations that seemingly offer nothing in return.

🧵 It’s a tempting narrative. A compelling soundbite. The idea that the U.S. is simply throwing billions at ungrateful nations makes for good political theater. But peel back the layers, and this argument falls apart. Foreign aid is not charity; it is a business transaction, a diplomatic tool, and an economic strategy. It benefits the giver far more than the receiver. The problem is that ordinary citizens in donor countries, including the United States, rarely see how this system enriches their own economy, sustains their industries, and extends their country’s global influence.

A Nigerian lawyer, Kenneth Ikonne Esq., narrates his saddest experience in court. The story is about love and betrayal. It throws up the issue of DNA on the spotlight again, leaving the reader spell-bound. If you are able to control your emotions and manage a few drops of tears, then get on with the story below.

🧵 The scene in the courtroom of the Family Division of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja, evoked deep pathos. The judge, a Lady, was sobbing. And so were the parties, the lawyers, and everyone else in that rattled courtroom, including me! It was at the hearing of a case instituted by me on behalf of my client, Dapo, against his former consort. Their relationship more, than thirteen years earlier, had produced a baby girl, but it did not eventually lead to marriage, even though Dapo had assumed full responsibility for the child’s upkeep and maintenance, and was at the time of the hearing bearing full responsibility for her schooling and upkeep at the very expensive Turkish – American secondary school at Victoria Island, Lagos! Dapo was well – heeled, a chartered accountant, and loved the child – his only child – dearly.

Nwanna, Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep.

But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must also use Biafra as the stepping stone to a higher vision of the Igbo place in the world. There is no single proof or evidence today that the Igbo of this generation are capable of transforming any nation to which they lay claim. I have looked; I have studied the Igbo situation, and I have listened to my Igbo kinsmen, and I think something is fundamentally wrong: the Igbo are trapped in a deadening hate, self-pity and nostalgia. It is the kind of nostalgia that is both defeatist and deadly because it continues to romanticize the past while the future speeds away.

The Igbo cannot wait until they achieve Biafra or a separate nation in order to build and secure Igbo land. Soon after the end of the war, Igbo survivors of the war, girded their loins and embarked on the work of restoration. With singular grit, they revived the economy of the East, and by 1979, just nine years after the end of the war, were ready to take on the rest of the nation again. We their children are a disgrace to the spirit of those men and women.

Two major projects were announced in Abuja last week: a polytechnic and a military barracks. Both were named after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I thought the president would say no to such fawning sycophancy. But no. He appears to love it. He actually sat and presided over the inauguration and naming of the barracks. A man goes to the stream to bathe and all maidens of the village struggle to be his wife or at least his mistress. That is the fortune of our president today; every loin scrambles for his hood. A sycophancy championship is afoot. If I were the president, I would be afraid and worried. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was offered the crown three times, and three times he rejected it. Yet, that gesture was used to consummate a conspiracy against him.

INVESTIGATION: Nigerian lawmakers demand N480 million from universities to approve 2025 budget
The lawmakers are forcing the vice-chancellors of about 60 federal universities to pay N8 million each to approve their allocations in the 2025 budgets.

🧵 Again, some lawmakers in the Nigerian National Assembly have set up a bribery scheme targeting federal universities and other tertiary institutions in the country.

Premium Times can report that lawmakers are using intimidation and threats to force the heads of universities to pay N8 million each to approve their allocations in the 2025 budgets.

This newspaper’s investigation revealed that the extortion scheme involves senators and members of the House of Representatives. The lawmakers, operating through the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund and the House Committee on University Education, are demanding money from universities to approve their budgets.

A leader with an eye on posterity won’t have the appetite for the vanity of naming projects after himself. This is because true immortality will be bestowed by history, not monuments that can be renamed. Tinubu needs to submit himself to some clear-eyed, sober reflection. This preoccupation with self-glorification and immortalisation is a telltale sign. There is now a Tinubu Barracks in Abuja. It’s a frenzy of self-immortalization. There is a Tinubu Airport in Minna. There is a Tinubu Polytechnic in Abuja. It was approved this week. There is a Tinubu Library at the National Assembly. The NASS wants to establish a Tinubu University of National Languages. All these naming ceremonies have happened in less than two years.

On 22 August 2024, Olukayode Ariwoola, the penultimate Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) retired from the bench and transitioned into a published author. At a well-attended event in the Abuja, the former CJN beamed at the public presentation of his autobiography. Published under the title Judging with Justice, the book was ghost written by Olanrewaju Akinsola (the author better known as Onigegewura). Laid out in 13 chapters and 496 pages, the author tells his story in the first 250 pages. The remainder of the book is dedicated to testimonials on the author from colleagues in the judiciary, lawyers, friends, peers, and family members.

ORIGIN OF BRITISH PROJECT OF DE-IGBONIZATION OF RIVERS IGBO AND
THE ROOT CAUSES OF IDENTITY DENIAL IN IKWERRE, OGBA AND MOST IGBO TRIBES IN RIVERS STATE

🧵 1. The British project of De-Igbonization of Riverein Igbo/Plot of War against the Igbo has basis in Resources Control and started actively after the Iva Valley/Enugu Coalmime Massacre of 1949. The British, after World War II, had a policy of using resources from the Colony to rebuild war devastated Britain. Coal, mined at Enugu and shipped to Britain was part of the grand plan. The 'rebellious' Igbo had other thoughts. The British were plundering the Igbo coal and paying pittance to the Igbo Coalminers. The miners protested and the British massacred. The immortal Osadebe song "Onuigbo" memorialises the massacre. The Enugu massacre didn't end at Enugu. It led to a general strike, led by Michael Imoudu, in Nigeria. It reverbrated across the British empire, particularly, Africa and speed up the independence campaigns. The British marked out the Igbo for destruction, including war. This is the origin of the plot for the Biafra War, which was originally scheduled to take place before or by 1958. Sir Robert Stapledon, Governor of Eastern Nigeria pressed Britain to defer the War.

The door of life is binary; it opens either ways, inwards or outwards. So goes an age-long wisdom. When the ThisDay newspaper, on 1 January announced President Bola Tinubu as its Man of the Year pick, emotions of Nigerians ran riot. Was that decision a product of editorial science or newspaper shamanism? Nigerians asked. To many, the newspaper’s editors must have meandered into some kind of trance, communed with with some unseen spirits and emerged therefrom with their odd pick. To others, ThisDay hit the bull’s eye. Suffering Nigerians were even ready to, in the lingo of the millenials, cut the ThisDay some slacks. So, they reason: could the newspaper have been seized by some inexplicable emotion of sympathy for the president on account of unprecedented attacks against his government? Did it merely want to decorate him to charm his vanity? So, like Lord Henry said in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, did the newspaper just go “bankrupt through an over-expenditure of (their) sympathy (for Tinubu)”? For a journalism profession which thumps own chest as “the rough draft of history,” the idea of the newspaper media choosing persons as ‘Man of the Year’ began in 1928, five years after the founding of the Time magazine on 3 March, 1923. The “Man of the Year” cover reflects individuals selected for their contributions for that particular calendar year. American aviator. Charles Lindberg, became the first person to grace the magazine’s “Man of the Year” cover that 1928. The choice of Lindberg, according to Time, which has coasted home with the coveted trophy of the world’s largest and first weekly news magazine, was based on his daring audacity of being the first solo aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He had flown from New York to Paris. With the decision to have Lindberg adorn its front page cover, which the editors said was a mere happenstance, the magazine began an annual ritual that has lasted almost a century.

Innovate or die!

As we cross into 2025, be aware that changes in the world will happen in the near future, beginning from 2025; here are some possibilities:

Innovate or die! Petrol stations will disappear just like video stores went moribund.

A futuristic thread 🧵 1. Car repair shops, lubricants, and radiators will disappear

2. Petrol/diesel engines consist of 20.000 pieces. While the electric car engines have 20 pieces, sold with a lifetime warranty, they are repaired at the dealer centres. They only take 10 minutes to unlock and replace.

3. Broken electric vehicle engines will be repaired in regional offices, e.g., robot repair workshops.

4. When your electric motor breaks down, you will head to a station; like a car wash station, you will pull your car in with your coffee, and you will come out with a new electric motor!

5. Gasoline pumps will be gone.

Dear Aare Afe Babalola SAN, I hope this meets you in the right condition because even though God has granted you grace of wealth and health, you are on a delicate level and must be managed.

🧵 You are highly blessed to have chosen a profession that made you such a great person. With over 6 decades of practice, 37 of it as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the Guinness Books must create a record for longevity of professional calling with distinction. It is not only long but positively eventful. You have made lawyers and senior advocates, judges and Justices and attorneys- general including the present Attorney- General of the Federation.

Contrary to assertions by some so-called experts who have been prattling all week that Dele Farotimi wrote what he could not logically substantiate in his book Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, this was a pre-meditated confrontation. Having depleted the legal means to get justice, he wrote to re-litigate the case in the court of public opinion. He seems calculatedly driven by the Yoruba proverb that says no one dies at the same spot they uttered blasphemy. In the time between your speaking and being punished, much can happen to change social dynamics. From the potpourri of events in the past week, Farotimi got what he wanted. One cannot say the same for Afe Babalola who, by now, would have realised that giving a traducer what they want is not the most prudent battle move. My reading is that Farotimi knew Babalola’s peculiar weakness and worked it to advantage. I will get to that momentarily.

🧵 The blowback from this case is another instance that hopefully teaches our elites to rein in their tendency to exploit the warped Nigerian justice system that allows criminal defamation as a legal recourse. Criminal defamation might be legal, but it is unjust. It is a law that exists to regulate the differentials of power and access, one of the many ways rich people further privatise public resources. Since lawmakers are too compromised to expunge the law and law enforcers incapable of the reflexivity that will enlighten them on the stupidity of using state resources to fight an individual over another’s integrity, the best we can do for now is pressure the entitled “big man” not to take that path. In a criminal case, the prosecutor investigates to convict. The Nigerian police, perennially short of resources, spares no expense when sent to prosecute criminal defamation on behalf of another narcissist. Why should the state do that on behalf of an ordinary individual? Babalola, especially, is a man of ample resources, who can afford to fight for his reputation on his own dime.

In the Matter of Dele Farotimi before the Star Chamber

Paul Anyebe was a judge of the High Court of Benue State in north-central Nigeria who had a young son with sticky fingers and a sense of adventure. It was his role as a dad that endangered his job as a judge.

One night around 1983, Anyebe caught his son attempting to steal from his bedroom. In response, Anyebe pulled his gun in an effort to scare the boy. The gun went off, discharging a bullet which hit and seriously injured the boy. The Attorney-General of Benue State decided to prosecute Paul Anyebe for attempted murder. The Penal Code applicable in Benue State at the time had ample provisions for the crime of attempted murder.

The Attorney-General also added a charge of illegal possession of firearms, a federal offence. Unlike the crime of attempted murder, which was a state crime in Benue State, all firearms offences are federal. The Attorney-General of Benue was well within his powers to prosecute for attempted murder but only the Attorney-General of the Federation could prosecute or authorize prosecution for federal offences.
🧵 At the conclusion of the trial, the High Court of Benue State discharged Paul Anyebe on the charge of attempted murder, a state offence, but convicted him on the charge of illegal possession of firearms (a federal offence) for which it sentenced him to three years in prison. The Court of Appeal reduced this sentence to six months in prison or a fine of one hundred Naira. Following this decision and while his appeal was yet to be heard by the Supreme Court, Paul Anyebe was dismissed as a judge.

When the Supreme Court decided Anyebe’s appeal in January 1986, Dahunsi Olugbemi Coker, a Justice of the court, summed up the issue for decision in one sentence: “The short point is whether a State Attorney-General can prosecute an offence created by an Act of the National Assembly.” To this question, the court unanimously responded in the negative. They nullified Anyebe’s trial and ordered the fine paid – one hundred Naira – refunded to him. The Court of Appeal ordered his reinstatement with full benefits.

The Banker and the Maiden: A True Story of Passion and Pain
A true life story 🧵

By the time you are done reading this piece you would have read in a beautiful story style, the case of MISS CHINYE A.M. EZEANAH V. ALHAJI MAHMOUD I. ATTA (2004) 7 NWLR (Pt. 873)468).

“When my love swears that she is made of truth,I do believe her, though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unskillful in the world’s false forgeries”-

William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim When the Banker met the Maiden in the early 1990s, it was love at first sight, at least on the part of the banker. Mahmoud Attah was the Banker. Chinye Ezeanah was the Maiden. Attah was however not just an ordinary banker. He was a super banker. In fact, he was the chairman of one of the biggest banks in Nigeria at the time.

Chinye was as beautiful as she was elegant. She was described by one of the witnesses as ‘fine and charming’. Theirs was a story described by the Supreme Court as a story of so much love and so much pain. But at the time, neither Attah nor Chinye knew that what started as love at first sight would end up in court as a landmark case.

It was not exactly clear when they met. The chairman claimed they met in 1991. Chinye claimed it was in 1993. According to her, it was at her younger sister’s boyfriend’s house that they met and it was in January 1993. The chairman saw the beautiful lady who was ‘fine and charming’ and became besotted. He asked her to be his girlfriend. Chinye refused on that day. The chairman however refused to take no for an answer.

They went on as father and daughter. The chairman became the guardian. The maiden became his ward. With time, Chinye agreed to become his girlfriend. Attah must have been elated. He lavished love and money on the object of his affection. He rented an apartment for her in Maitama, Abuja. At the time when telephone was the exclusive preserve of the rich and a status symbol, the apartment had an installed telephone, courtesy of Alhaji Attah.

A Journey to Agnostic Theism: Seeking God Amid Confusing Evidence

God isn’t a phantom, nor can He be fully fathomed.

If you ask Richard Swinburne, the British philosopher who has devoted his career to pondering the divine, he would say—with scarcely a pause—that it is far more probable that God exists than not. His compatriot, physicist Stephen Unwin, in his book The Probability of God, even ventures an audacious Bayesian estimate of 67% for the likelihood of God’s existence. Yet their fellow countryman, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, counters this with a starkly different view: in The God Delusion, he rhetorically places the probability as low as 2%. Christopher Hitchens, another British thinker, spent his life passionately arguing along similar skeptical lines.

A thread 🧵 These contrasting positions reveal a decision-theoretic dilemma akin to a cosmic Prisoner’s Dilemma: should we embrace the common belief in God in pursuit of everlasting bliss, or seek skeptical autonomy (freedom to reason independently) and risk eternal damnation? Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher, articulated this tension masterfully in his famous Wager, contending that belief in God is the safest gamble: it offers infinite gain if God truly exists and only finite loss if He does not; while disbelief risks infinite loss or, at best, offers finite gain.

The polarized perspectives on God highlight a profound tension between belief and doubt—between faith and reason—that has intensified in contemporary times due to the advance of science and modernization. This dichotomy has led to increasing secularization in affluent parts of the world, juxtaposed with the persistence and even intensification of religiosity and desecularization elsewhere. Agnostic theism seeks to navigate this tension by affirming the possibility of God’s existence while acknowledging the inscrutability of the divine.

As a layperson (a cradle Christian and fervent adherent in my youth) who has long pondered this matter, particularly to clarify the basis for my Christian faith, I find myself increasingly attracted to—or, at least, curious about—this philosophical position. It maintains a firm belief in God while recognizing ambiguity about His attributes and role in nature. On balance, I believe accessible evidence points strongly toward a transcendent reality and a Supreme Being we call God (my Igbo name—see byline—asserts this very claim). Yet, while affirming this belief, I cannot presume a high level of certainty about the true nature of God, His intentions, or methods—or whether these are accessible to human cognition. Consequently, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with religious dogma, preferring to show intellectual humility in my belief as I revel in—and try to unravel—the wonder of existence. I embrace science as a glimpse into the divine order but recognize its limits in addressing ultimate metaphysical questions.

Apparently, Reuben Abati's run-in with accusations of Igbophobia did not start today. Here is a January 2002 right of reply on Reuben's article published in the Guardian Newspaper titled "Obasanjo, Secession and the Secessionists", written by veteran journalist Josh Arinze who escaped Abacha's repression of journalists in the aftermath of the Gwadebe fathom coup, and took political asylum in the United States in 1995.
Enjoy the thread. 🧵 Dear Reuben,
You know who I am, so I’ll cut out the niceties and go straight to the point. I tend to stick to civility, however controversial the issue. But since small
minds have trouble understanding the language of
enlightened discourse, I will make an exception and try to speak to you in a language you can understand.

I’m aware that The (Lagos) Guardian has been on the
Web for a while.  I follow events in Nigeria very closely, but I don’t usually read your column.  There are two reasons for that.  One: the few articles of yours I’ve read in the past were rather heavy on polemics, and offered very little by way of clear-headed analysis.
Two: your prose is quite pedestrian, although I’m sure your friends and relatives wouldn’t tell you that. 

Pardon me for hurting your feelings, Reuben, but you’re not exactly the 1960s generation’s equivalent of Ray Ekpu or Dan Agbese.  And with so many excellent works to read and so little time, I pay very little
attention to second-rate columnists.

However, on December 23, I got an e-mail about a
write-up of yours that appeared in that day’s edition
of The Guardian. If you were craving attention with
that hatchet job you put together, you sure found it, boy. Congratulations.

And Americans Went Out to Vote, Vexed, and Flexed for Historic Change

Donald Trump's impending return to the U.S. presidency promises potentially profound conservative reversals in domestic and foreign policy. However, the inexorable logic of history suggests a progressive trajectory in the long run.

Chain Post⛓️ In March 1933, after a meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.―a distinguished jurist and recently retired justice of the US Supreme Court, then 92―famously quipped that the newly inaugurated president was “a second-class intellect with a first-class temperament.” This observation pointed to the new president’s unique mix of charisma, resilience, and optimism, even if not of a cerebral bent—traits that had won over the American public at a particularly difficult time.

If I were to adapt Holmes’s observation and apply it to Donald Trump, I might say he possesses a second-rate intellect, with great cunning and a canny political instinct. It’s _how_ he was able to win 51% of the popular vote and significant projected share of electoral votes (301) in the 5 November 2024 presidential election; and is now poised to return to power despite the upheavals of his first tenure and a post-presidency marked a myriad of legal issues, controversies, and divisiveness.

Is Tinubu settling scores?

Tinubu has become an unabashed chauvinist. It’s a hard watch. It doesn’t bode well for national unity. Tinubu’s critical appointments have become the most lopsided in the history of this country.

A Chain Post ⛓️ A Yoruba is the police Inspector General. A Yoruba is the EFCC Chairman. A Yoruba is the Head of the DSS. A Yoruba is the Attorney General. A Yoruba is the Chief Justice of the Federation. And Tinubu, a Yoruba, is the President and overseer of all instruments of coercion. The entire criminal justice system is in the hands of one ethnic group.

Chuks Iloegbunam tells General Gowon that only the truth shall make Nigeria free
…Faith, without good works, is dead

Dear General Yakubu Gowon.

You spoke to the Daily Trust on Saturday, October 19, 2024. The rare interview, conducted by Andrew Agbese and Isiaka Wakili, marked your 90th birthday anniversary.

In it, you celebrated revisionism and claimed things that were not backed by evidence. This open letter is to point out and correct your horrendous amputations of contemporary Nigerian history. It is a necessary exercise because, as your Christian faith commands and as your fellow Christians profess, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32.

Your interviewers asked this question: “You are committed to Nigeria’s unity; how did you take it when the civil war broke out?” You gave a long-winded answer that portrayed you as an all-time champion of national unity. But, if you remember that as Head of State, you said in your maiden nationwide broadcast on Monday, August 1, 1966, that there was no basis for Nigerian unity, your self-description as a permanent apostle of national unity stands out as perverse. This is another claim of yours: “My duty and profession at that time demanded to make sure that we kept the country together. And that was how it happened.”

Sir, with the most profound respect, that was not exactly how it happened. In that historic broadcast of yours, you were going to declare a Republic of Northern Nigeria. In it, you said inter alia: “As a result of the recent events and of previous ones, I have come to strongly believe that we cannot continue in this wise, as the basis for trust and confidence in our unitary system of government has been unable to stand the test of time. I have already remarked on the issue in question. Suffice it to say that putting all considerations to the test, political, economic as well as social, the basis of unity is not there…”

A thread. 🧵 Because you had discounted the basis of national unity, your declaration of the Republic of Northern Nigeria was to follow as a matter of course. But America and Britain stayed your hand. Various manufactured and deodorised versions of your broadcast have for decades been flying all over the place. But they cannot obscure the adamantine truth. The BBC transcript of your broadcast is reproduced in A. H. M. Kirk-Greene’s Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook 1966-1970, Oxford University Press, London; 1971. For a tiny fee, anyone can pick up a voice recording of the broadcast from the BBC Monitoring Service. Similarly, the denials of your intention to declare secession are in vain. Suzanne Cronje, the South African socialist writer, and historian had quoted Professor Eni Njoku, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, and Sir Louis Mbanefo, a former member of the Nigerian Bench and the World Court at The Hague, as telling her what they had heard from Sir Francis Cumming-Bruce, the British High Commissioner in Lagos, to wit that he had dissuaded you from sundering Nigeria. (See Suzanne Cronje, The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafran War, 1957-1970, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1972; page17.

The recent rejection of Sunday Adeyemo’s, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, petition by the UK government has highlighted the reckless and ill-informed nature of his agitation for the Yoruba Nation. The UK's firm stance, refusing to lend its support to a cause that meddles with the sovereignty of Nigeria, should serve as a clear signal that Igboho’s self-proclaimed leadership of this movement is not only misguided but also unworthy of serious international attention. What is most concerning about the entire situation is not just the predictable rejection by the UK, but the fact that a figure like Igboho—a self-styled freedom fighter with no formal education or understanding of governance—has been able to rise to such prominence. This speaks volumes about the failures within certain sectors of the Nigerian society that allow individuals like Igboho, a political thug, to spearhead movements of such a serious nature.

In just over a year, those who claimed President Bola Tinubu was a pro-democracy activist with the powers of a master economic strategist have all faded into oblivion. There is neither democracy nor economic relief in sight. All we have now are hirelings either digging up excuses to explain policy failures or trying to buy more time for the man who “built Lagos” to perfect his plan to capture the Nigerian state and turn it into a private estate.

A thread 🧵 Reality has set in for both friends and foes of the Tinubu presidency. But let's cut the president some slack: The real Tinubu has always been in plain sight. A few chose to believe the fictional Tinubu, a creation of well paid spin doctors. The rest were silenced by a dubious electoral victory and a curious judicial verdict. This president is doing exactly what he is hard wired to do. I will explain.