By Tonye Clinton Jaja

This morning I had a WhatsApp telephone conversation with a very senior staff member of the Registry of one of Nigeria’s superior courts.

In a nutshell, he said that between Governor Fubara and His Excellency Wike, he would choose Fubara as a friend even though Fubara is “naive” in terms of politics when compared to Wike. In his words, Fubara’s nativity is “safer” for the development of Rivers State than Wike’s mastery of the political terrain!!!

The said person is an indigene of Rivers State and we were expressing our concerns for Rivers State in the light of the recent judgments of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Truly, Fubara is a neophyte within political circles considering that this is his first time to hold an elective office.

Therefore, as a neophyte, due to his naivety, it is understandable that he must have committed some blunders which can be best described as faults. “A fault is defined as: “an unattractive or unsatisfactory feature, especially in a piece of work or in a person’s character.
“my worst fault is impatience”.

Contrasted with the flaws of his opponents, Fubara’s faults are not pre-meditated and calculated to achieve an endgame (to hold onto political power for self-aggrandizement)!!!

Fubara’s faults are at best the results of his response to protect the Commonwealth of Rivers State from the mindless appropriation of a few instead of equitable distribution to the majority of the indigenes of Rivers State.

As evidence of his genuine concern for the economic well-being of Rivers State, within one year of his tenure, he increased the internally generated revenue (IGR) of Rivers State by ₦100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion naira only).

In contrast, his predecessor left Rivers State with a humongous debt profile!!!

He has come under relentless attacks, especially by the use of the machineries of the Nigerian legal system and since he is not a lawyer, he is not often in the best position to determine the best form of response in terms of legal action or strategy!!!

He is learning on the job!!!

His words and actions come from a place of one who is learning to respond to challenges that have no previous precedents in any guidebook!!!

Under the circumstances, Governor Fubara is performing beyond expectation, for him to still be thriving under the circumstances where others would have long since perished!!!

Apart from any human ingenuity on the part of Governor Fubara and his team, there must be some sort of help from “above”!!!

Since his assumption of office in May 2023, he has exceeded the performance of his predecessor within the same time period.

In contrast, in terms of the long-term well-being of Rivers State, we cannot say the same about the intentions and motivations of the antagonists of Governor Fubara.

Theirs is just a power grab, pure and simple that quest to be in control of the levers of political power for the sole purpose of determining “who gets what” of the Commonwealth of Rivers State!!!

This has been their tragic flaw (in contradiction to a fault).

And by definition, a “flaw” is an indelible mark, that cannot be easily removed.

In contrast to a fault, which can be corrected, a flaw is more permanent and deeply ingrained.

A fault is cosmetic on the surface, whereas a flaw is deeper!!!

A fault is a result of weakness but a flaw is as a result of a well-thought plot and a habit of doing things a certain way!!!

Fubara’s fault is that he has NEVER navigated the labyrinth of Nigeria’s legal system from the high court all the way to the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

He can up against a protagonist whose CV is characterised by several journeys from the High Court all the way to the Supreme Court of Nigeria (several times)!!!

So Fubara still dey learn work where this protagonist dey!!!!

Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,
Executive Director,
Nigerian Law Society (NLS).

By Rt. Hon. Dr. Ngunan Addingi

The recent allegations of sexual harassment against Senate President Godswill Akpabio by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan have sparked a familiar sequence of events in Nigeria’s political landscape.

Akpabio’s denial, counter-accusations, and legal threats, including a N250 billion defamation lawsuit filed by his wife, Unoma Akpabio, are all too common in cases involving powerful men.

This case bears striking similarities to previous allegations made by Joy Nunieh, the former Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), against Akpabio in 2020. The lack of proper investigation and accountability in Nunieh’s case has contributed to the perpetuation of a culture of impunity, enabling similar allegations to surface again.

Now, the involvement of Akpabio’s wife in filing a defamation lawsuit adds a new layer of complexity, attempting to shift the focus from the substance of the allegations to a legal battle over reputation.

As a woman in politics too, this move sends a warning signal to other women in Nigerian politics who might consider speaking out against powerful figures.

My take on all this is that Nigeria’s institutional failure to handle allegations of sexual harassment with credibility is a significant concern. The country’s troubling record of providing justice for victims, especially when the accused hold positions of power, underscores the need for systemic reforms.

Hence going forward there are steps that must be taken.

Key Reforms Needed:

Independent Investigations:
Allegations of sexual harassment and abuse of power must be investigated by independent bodies, not committees controlled by the accused or their allies.

Stronger Legal Protections:
Women in public office need stronger legal safeguards against gender-based harassment and political victimization.

Transparency and Accountability:
The Nigerian political establishment must abandon its tradition of shielding alleged perpetrators and ensure that accusations are addressed with transparency rather than dismissed outright.

Ultimately, Nigeria as a nation stands at a crossroads. It can continue to dismiss allegations of sexual harassment, silence women in politics, and shield powerful men from accountability. Or, it can take this moment to redefine its political culture, valuing accountability, justice, and truth over convenience and loyalty.

My advice?

An independent panel should investigate the allegations, and if Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan is lying, let it be proven.

If she is telling the truth, she deserves justice—not just for herself, but for every woman who has been forced into silence.

This is my personal opinion. What are yours?

Rt. Hon. Dr. Ngunan Addingi
Former, Member of Benue State House of Assembly 2011-2019
Commissioner of Information, Culture and Tourism 2019-2022

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Comprising five of the country’s 36 states, south-east Nigeria is the site of resilient atrocity. In the eight years from the middle of 2015 to the end of 2023, the monitoring coalition, Nigeria Mourns, confirmed about 3,000 killings in this theatre from open source records but unofficial estimates suggest that there may be up to five killings missed for each counted. The worst of the killings have occurred since 2019 and the worst-hit state in the zone over that period is Anambra.

Many erroneously date the origins of this to the radicalization of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the aftermath of its proscription in 2017. In reality, the escalation has lasted for over a quarter of a century dating back approximately to the assassination in Enugu in 1998 of Igwe Amobi IV of Ogidi.

The annual Conflict Barometer by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research identifies the south-east as one of eight different conflicts of concern in Nigeria, describing it as a “violent crisis of secession” and ranks it on a par with the crisis of armed pastoralism in the Middle Belt of the country; ahead of the crisis of resource militancy in the Niger Delta; and only below the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east and the armed bandits in the north-west of Nigeria.

Three framings define the crisis in south-east Nigeria in popular narrative. One is that it is about secession. A second is that most of the fatal incidents connected with it are perpetrated by “unknown gunmen”. The third is that the response to the situation is predominantly kinetic. Each of these is flawed. Together, they miss the underlying issues, with the result that they have turned an otherwise manageable crisis into an interminable atrocity.

Let’s begin with the first. The simplicity of the secession narrative is appealing at both the emotive and pecuniary levels. The former unites other Nigerians with subliminal appeal against a historical “Igbo question”. The latter enables the managers of expeditionary military deployments in the region to finagle more money for themselves using the excuse of preserving Nigeria’s territorial integrity. This would not be so if the situation were to be understood as a policing preoccupation with crime and criminality.

What’s the reality? IPOB’s business model does not stand a snowball’s chance in hell in any of the truly deadly sites of atrocity in south-east Nigeria. Awkuzu, host to the most horrendous atrocities in the region, is the site of “Nigeria’s most brutal police station” where hundreds, if not more, detainees have been killed extra-judicially. In Obosi, the ancient city on the banks of the Idemili River; and in Awka, the state capital, hundreds of young men routinely exterminate one another in murderous inter-cult and inter-gang warfare. In Ogbaru, located between the banks of Oguta Lake and the floodplains of River Niger, organized gangs mobilize deadly violence in sophisticated operations to rustle hydrocarbons. Lokpanta, the point along the Enugu-Port-Harcourt motorway where all the states of south-east Nigeria come close to sharing common borders is an ungoverned territory where commercial kidnapping meets atrocity liquidation. None of these square with the convenience or simplicity of the secession narrative or with its profitability.

Turning to the second popular narrative about the situation in south-east Nigeria, the mythical “unknown” perpetrator is a figure of considerable antiquity in Nigeria. It has been around since the inconclusive judicial inquiry into the attack on Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Kalakuta Republic in February 1977 blamed the incident on the “unknown soldier”. In 2011, the traditional ruler of Ihembosi, a community in Anambra State, was disappeared by “unknown gunmen.” They were also to blame in the violent abduction and subsequent disappearance in May 2014 of Chike Okoli, former Commissioner in the same state.

The legend of the unknown perpetrator in Nigeria has over the years emerged as both metaphor and measure of what is widely seen as state incapacity and leadership indifference to the scourge of impunity in the country. Far from an affirmation of unknown actors, Nigeria’s legend of the unknown perpetrator signposts a sense of popular despondency or loss of belief in the capacity of the state to end impunity for atrocities.

In the face of these tendencies, therefore, the third idea that the country or region can shoot its way out of this crisis is worse than wishful thinking. The complex landscape of drivers and factors in the situation in south-east Nigeria does not lend itself to such over-simplifications. To reprise a useful metaphor, it is more deserving of a scalpel than a hammer.

Over 24 months from 2022 to 2024, Bianca Ojukwu, the current Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and I together led a Truth, Justice and Peace Commission (TJPC) into the causes of the crisis in south-east Nigeria, the perpetrators, the consequences and possible solutions. The Commission met and consulted with hundreds of victims and witnesses, including the security services, community leaders, clergy, politicians, vigilante elements as well as various armed militias in the region.

Two things were evident. One is that the situation in the south-east is fundamentally a crisis of governance and of popular lack of belief in the legitimacy of many in political office in the region. The second is a clear desire on the part of most people to recover their communities and address the tasks of reconstruction and healing from the traumas of the violence.

There are no easy answers to these but there are common threads. Rather perversely, the perpetrators who insist on rendering the region uninhabitable and the security providers who feed the secessionist trope are both engaged in a mutually profitable joint enterprise. Neither wishes insecurity in the south-east to end. This is why the audacity of Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo in enacting the new Anambra State Homeland Security Law, 2025, is welcome because it evinces a durable solution to the crisis. The law establishes a complementary security provider for the state called “Agun’echemba” (sentinel at the gate) and launches Udo g’Achi (peace shall reign) targeting atrocity insecurity.

Several aspects of the new law have come under scrutiny. In particular, section 18 which targets transactional ritualism has drawn attention, with claims that it lacks the clarity required to pass constitutional muster and discriminates against traditional worship. For context, the TJPC which I led met twice with Juju priests. Separately, I met privately with some senior exponents of the trade. They were united in acknowledging that some amongst them had chosen to parlay their skills in support of atrocity insecurity and made detailed proposals, including asking the government to help root out such practitioners, prohibit infiltration, and regulate and support legitimate practitioners.

The TJPC report diagnosed this phenomenon as “transactional accultism”, which it identified as enabling “violent cultism” and “the crisis of insecurity”. The report argues that this is “a major component of the psychological armor plate of impunity” providing the perpetrators of the violence with deadly rituals which lead them to believe that they have “an aura of both impenetrability to projectiles and invincibility in the field of atrocity, an immense psychological boost in an environment of impunity.”

The law also targets the compounded deficit of legitimate political leadership as an underlying driver of the crisis of insecurity in the region. In 2005, the New Humanitarian reported on the situation in south-east Nigeria that “rigged elections increase disenchantment”, explaining that sympathy for separatism “has been growing since the general elections of April and May 2003, which were marred by widespread allegations of vote rigging.” Office holders who are widely seen as lacking legitimacy are liable to be compromised when confronted with atrocity insecurity. Instead, they get reduced to belligerents instrumentalizing the violence rather than seeking to end it. In this law, Governor Soludo shows he is different.

Above all, this law also addresses the need to rebuild the capacity to administer criminal justice fairly and effectively, beginning with responsible policing; capable magistrates, coroners and the office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP). In many states in the region, the police have been rendered destitute of confidence, denuded of the trust of communities. Similarly, most magistrates are desolate and DPP’s offices in the region are unfunded, leaving prosecutorial personnel at the mercy of self-interested parties or of adversaries who threaten them into being ineffectual. The result is that in much of region, all sides glamourize summary, arbitrary or extra-judicial killing as the solution to crime or deviance, disagreement or dissonance.

None of these is easy to implement. As a programme, it confronts organized opposition from those who have profited so far from the over-simplification in a single-narrative of secession that has bedeviled the search for solutions to the situation. This present Government of Anambra State has demonstrated single-mindedness ending this. For that it deserves support and other states in the region can adapt this model.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

By Obioma Ezenwobodo

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently adjusted telecom tariffs by a 50% increment. These jacked-up tariffs would adversely affect the cost of calls, data, and text messages for over 224 million telecom subscribers in Nigeria. This increment is wrong, unilateral, unfair, unjust, and an abuse of the dominant position of the NCC in contrast to the existential regulatory framework and debilitating hardship in the country.

One of the main objectives of the NCC is to protect the rights and interests of service providers (MTN, GLO, and AIRTEL & Others) and consumers in Nigeria. The contemplation of the NCC Act, 2003 is to serve as a wedge against the exploitation of Nigerian consumers by Service Providers on one hand and to facilitate the growth of the Telecom industry on the other hand.

Sections 108, 109, and 110 of the NCC Act provide that the NCC shall make regulations determining tariffs and charges for respective telecom services by the Service Providers. The powers of the NCC to make regulations on tariff adjustment are provided by section 70 of the NCC Act. As a matter of law, section 71 of the NCC Act provides that before making the regulation, the NCC shall conduct an inquiry in the manner specified in Part 11 of the Act. By section 57 (3) of the NCC Act, the NCC is compelled to hold a public inquiry in all instances that it is mandatorily required under the Act or its subsidiary legislation to hold an inquiry. The clear implication of section 57 (3) is that, by the fact that section 71 has mandated the NCC to conduct an inquiry before making a regulation, the NCC is mandated to conduct the inquiry publicly. In other words, the NCC is compelled by its enabling law to conduct a public inquiry before coming up with the Telecom Tariff Hike. The intention of the draftsmen in crafting these provisions is obviously to provide the telecom regulator (NCC), the Service Providers, and the Consumers an avenue to present their positions, negotiate upon the same, and jointly arrive at fair and just telecom tariffs.

It is not contemplated in the NCC Act for the NCC to arbitrarily fix telecom tariffs without input from the public. It is beyond imagination that such an important decision would be made without carrying the final recipients on board. This is a clear abuse of the dominant position that the NCC Act has placed on the NCC and provided against by section 74(1) and (2) of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018. Also, this unilateral action against millions of Nigerian telecom consumers amounts to unfair dealing and unjust as provided by sections 124 and 127 of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018, respectively.

The implication of the NCC failure to adhere to the statutorily procedure renders the tariff hike unlawful and void. It is fervently believed that the NCC, being a law-abiding institution, will tow the path of law by complying with the provisions of its enabling law to first conduct a public inquiry to determine the fair and just telecom tariffs to be made before any announcement of same.  

Obioma Ezenwobodo LL.M.

Managing Partner, Resolution Attorneys

Executive Director, Policy and Legislative Advocacy Network (PLAN)

[email protected]