By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

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

The journey to this bill has been somewhat tortured. The last time there was meaningful legislative action on the regulation of the legal profession in Nigeria, the military were 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 to be updated. Substantial disagreements, however, existed as to 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 this 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 this 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 (including 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, 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 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 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 anti-thesis of what the effort to reform the Legal Practitioners Act was meant to be.

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

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Farooq A. Kperogi

As the economy bites harder and end-of-year festivities rev up, the routine “tax” on middle-class Nigerians (the few of them that still exist, that is,) the political class and Nigerians in the diaspora predictably intensifies.

December is always expensive in Nigeria, but it now comes with an additional, informal levy: the expectation that anyone perceived as doing “well” must redistribute their resources far beyond family obligation.

For a long time, begging in Nigeria was associated with what Marxists once called the lumpen proletariat, that is, the dirt-poor, socially marginal and largely unorganized underclass. In Nigeria, this image was most vividly represented by the almajirai in the North, children sent to Qur’anic schools who were expected to fend for themselves through street begging.

That picture no longer captures the reality. Begging has morphed into a flourishing, multi-layered industry with widening entrants, diversified platforms and increasingly normalized practices. What was once stigmatized has become routinized, rationalized and, in some cases, even celebrated.

One major accelerant of this shift is online begging, or e-begging. It first gained social legitimacy through “giveaways” staged by social media influencers seeking to grow the numerical strength of their subscriber base and boost engagement metrics. What began as a marketing tactic quickly turned into a cultural script. The logic is that public generosity creates visibility, visibility creates clout and clout converts to income.

But the giveaways did something more corrosive. They normalized public solicitation. Today, hordes of Nigerians drop their names and bank account numbers in comment sections without the slightest embarrassment. Sometimes they do so during announced giveaways. Increasingly, they do so even when there is no giveaway at all. The request itself has become the performance.

This represents a sharp cultural break. Shame and moderation, once important moral regulators in many Nigerian societies, have been eroded. Mendicancy has shed its stigma. Asking publicly for money, repeatedly and without restraint, no longer attracts social penalty. In some online spaces, it attracts admiration for “boldness.”

To be clear, taxing wealthier relatives to feed, clothe and educate poorer kin is not new. Many Nigerians from economically deprived homes benefited from the kindness and generosity of more successful relatives. I am one of them.

We also learn that when we climb the ladder, we have a moral obligation to pay it forward. This ethic of mutual aid is deeply embedded in many Nigerian cultures, and it has helped countless people survive in the absence of a functional welfare state.

What has changed is not the ethic itself but its scale, scope and coercive intensity.

In the last few years, driven by rising inequality and the normalization of begging as an income strategy, the financial and emotional burden placed on comparatively well-off professionals has widened dramatically. The obligation now extends well beyond extended family. Acquaintances, friends of friends, former classmates, distant community members and even strangers now feel entitled to private redistribution.

Worse still, not everyone whose burden is carried by others is poor. For many, begging has become a source of passive income, an alternative revenue stream or even the primary means of livelihood. I have heard multiple accounts of people who built entire houses, from foundation to finishing, purely from proceeds of beggary. This is no longer emergency relief. It is enterprise.

What sustains this culture is a peculiar sense of entitlement. For example, Nigerians who live abroad, especially in countries with stronger currencies, are widely imagined to be awash in vast oceans of money.

The brutal realities of rent, taxes, health insurance, childcare and precarious labor markets abroad are erased. They conveniently replace the lived experience of diasporan Nigerians with a crude, ignorant exchange-rate arithmetic.

As a result, even acts of real sacrifice are interpreted not as generosity but as sprouting from effortless abundance.

I once extended a significant financial favor to a relative. Instead of gratitude, I later learned that this person had told another relative that I did not deserve too much praise because the dollar-to-naira exchange rate meant that “a few thousand dollars” from me amounted to millions of naira. The assumption was that thousands of dollars are to Americans what thousands of naira are to Nigerians.

This is fantasy economics, of course, but it is powerful fantasy. It turns helpers into inexhaustible wells. Nothing they give is ever enough because the imagined surplus is infinite.

Politicians and people close to political power experience the same dynamic. Merely being adjacent to authority is enough to generate demands. People assume access to limitless resources, contracts, favors and cash. Every refusal is read as “wickedness.” Every gift is insufficient. Gratitude disappears because entitlement has taken its place.

What makes this phenomenon especially troubling is that it is rarely recognized as structural. It is personalized, moralized and weaponized. If you resist, you are accused of selfishness or betrayal. If you comply, you’re seen as embodying boundless abundance, and the demands escalate. Either way, the individual absorbs the costs of collective failure.

There is no question that the scale and persistence of begging are increasing daily in Nigeria. Previously proud and self-respecting people now engage in what can only be described as executive begging: polished, strategic, emotionally manipulative solicitation performed by people who know exactly how to frame vulnerability for maximum extraction.

Unfortunately, this is not a victimless system. Fairly well-to-do Nigerians, both at home and abroad, are stretched and stressed. They are not simply “helping family.” They are informally tasked with carrying portions of the nation’s social welfare burden. They subsidize state collapse with private sacrifice. But no seems to know or care.

The consequences are profound. Many delay building their own homes. Others postpone retirement savings. Some abandon entrepreneurial ambitions. Intergenerational wealth transfer becomes impossible when today’s surplus is permanently pre-empted by yesterday’s deprivation. What looks like generosity in the short term reproduces fragility in the long term.

This is why the phenomenon deserves systematic study. How much is the begging economy worth annually in Nigeria? What proportion of household income flows through informal redistribution networks? How much investment, savings and productive capital formation is foregone as a result? Until we quantify these questions, we will continue to treat a structural crisis as a series of private moral dilemmas.

Individualizing a structural problem harms everyone. It breeds resentment among givers, dependency among receivers and moral confusion in society at large. We end up with a culture where no one feels responsible for fixing institutions, but everyone feels entitled to someone else’s paycheck.

Nigeria needs a system where the burden of state failure is not casually transferred to individuals lucky enough to escape it. We need social norms that reward productivity and dignity rather than permanent solicitation. We need public policy that reduces desperation instead of romanticizing survivalism. Most of all, we need to recover the idea that begging should be a last resort, not a business model.

Until then, Nigeria’s growing begging economy will continue to expand, insidiously taxing the few who manage to stay afloat while deepening the very inequalities that made it possible in the first place.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

• A Wake-Up Call to the NALT Leadership

By Sylvester Udemezue

(1). Introduction: A New Executive, the Same Old Culture

On 30 October 2024, following my lamentations on NALT’s persistent neglect of its own objectives while chasing after issues unrelated to its core mission, a colleague reassured me thus: “That is about to change. You were obviously absent at the manifesto programme today. The election of the new executive is coming up tomorrow.” That assurance sounded hopeful: a promise of reawakening. It suggested that NALT might finally confront the crisis of focus that has haunted it for decades. The next day a new leadership was installed for the NALT with huge promises of far-reaching reforms and positive changes. Sadly, one year later, after reviewing the papers presented at the just-concluded 56th Annual Conference of NALT, held at the University of Abuja (26–30 October 2025), one is compelled to ask: What has really changed? What tangible innovation has the current leadership of NALT introduced beyond organising another Annual General Conference where most papers once again have little or nothing to do with NALT’s constitutional objectives or the pressing challenges facing legal education in Nigeria?

(2). The Disconnect Between NALT’s Mandate and Its Conferences

The objectives of NALT, as enshrined in its Constitution, are clear: (i) to promote excellence in law teaching and research; (ii) to enhance legal education and pedagogy; (iii) to foster academic collaboration among law teachers; and (iv) to engage meaningfully with stakeholders on issues affecting the development, regulation, and quality of legal education in Nigeria. Yet, the 2025 Conference theme (“Law, National Development and Economic Sustainability in a Globalised World”) though lofty, is once again generic and detached from NALT’s true constituency. Out of the nineteen papers presented (four plenary and fifteen sessional), only a negligible few even tangentially touch on issues of law teaching, research, or education reform. Most others dwell on broad political and economic topics such as: Rejigging the Jurisprudence of Election Petition in Nigeria for National Integration and Cohesion; Challenges to Regional Cooperation for Economic Development; Economic Sustainability, State Sovereignty and the New World Order; and Examining the Implications of Nigerian Tax Reform Regime for National Development and Economic Sustainability.

While intellectually commendable, these papers are far removed from NALT’s foundational purpose. They contribute little or nothing to ongoing crises in law teacher welfare, curriculum review, research standards, professional ethics, ICT integration, or institutional synergy.

(3). The Real Issues NALT Conferences Keep Ignoring

If NALT were faithful to its objectives, its conferences would engage with the core challenges confronting legal education in Nigeria: the very areas crying for reform and advocacy. Legal education in Nigeria currently faces a multiplicity of interconnected crises that have undermined its effectiveness and global competitiveness. Chief among these are: Inadequate funding of law faculties and legal education institutions; Shortage, poor welfare, and low motivation of academic staff, leading to brain drain; Inadequate infrastructure, including poorly equipped libraries, obsolete ICT tools, and overcrowded classrooms; Over-enrolment and unsustainable student–staff ratios; Outdated curriculum misaligned with global practice and professional demands; Weak linkage between law faculties, the Nigerian Law School, and the wider profession, producing a chronic skills gap; Proliferation of law faculties without quality assurance or proper accreditation; Frequent industrial actions and unstable academic calendars that disrupt learning; Poor research culture, weak publication output, and lack of institutional support; Deficient use of ICT and e-learning in pedagogy; Inadequate clinical legal education and practical skills training; Weak regulatory enforcement by the Council of Legal Education (CLE) and the National Universities Commission (NUC); Low motivation and career stagnation among law teachers; Rampant brain drain to other professions and countries; and Lack of alignment between legal-education outputs and the needs of the legal market and society, among others. These challenges are existential to the health of legal education; yet NALT conferences consistently sidestep them, preferring to debate elections, federalism, or tax policy.

(4). Leadership Without Legacy

The situation is worsened by NALT’s short two-year leadership cycle, which hardly allows for vision, continuity, or institutional reform. If every leadership’s main legacy is merely “organising the next conference,” then the National Executive Committee (NEC) might as well be renamed the Annual Conference Planning Committee. Where are NALT’s sustained dialogues with the CLE, NUC, or NBA on curriculum reform, academic ethics, or faculty development?
Where are its policy papers or communiqués on teacher welfare, quality assurance, or technological adaptation in legal education, among numerous others? Without answers to these questions, NALT risks becoming an annual event without an annual impact.

(5). The Fifty Ignored Priorities: What NALT Should Be Discussing

The following fifty (50) pressing research and discussion areas have been lamentably overlooked at NALT’s Annual General Conferences, even though they lie at the very heart of NALT’s mandate and relevance: why is NALT’s leadership lifespan pegged at only 24 months, and what meaningful reforms can a leadership with such a short tenure realistically achieve? When will NALT amend its constitution to create a longer, more stable and impactful leadership structure? How do successive NALT leaderships feel after each conference without discussing topics central to the association’s raison d’être? Would the heavens fall if NALT’s conferences were redirected to tackle the real problems affecting its own constituency (law teachers, law students, and legal education institutions) rather than distant political and economic themes? For instance, NALT conferences should be examining: (1) how to prevent the rampant sex-for-marks syndrome that tarnishes the image of academia; (2) lecturers’ involvement in exam malpractices, such as the shocking incident of a law lecturer caught impersonating a student during Bar Part II examinations; (3) the mistreatment of law teachers within the legal profession, particularly the discriminatory Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Guidelines that marginalise academics; (4) the serious synergy deficit between law faculties, the Nigerian Law School, and the Council of Legal Education regarding admission, qualification, and professional preparation; (5) the growing role of Artificial Intelligence in law teaching and learning; (6) controversies surrounding university admission quotas; (7) accreditation standards for law faculties and their enforcement; (8) election malpractice and unethical political involvement of some law teachers; (9) curriculum review, update, and implementation to meet global standards; (10) pervasive corruption in the management of law faculties; (11) inadequate teaching and learning facilities; (12) the unhealthy proliferation of substandard law faculties; (13) poor funding of legal education; (14) the negative impact of recurring industrial actions and strikes on the continuity of legal training; (15) the development of practical teaching and learning tools; (16) incompetence and non-commitment among some law teachers; (17) exam malpractice within law faculties; (18) whether substantive and procedural law training should be unified or remain bifurcated; (19) the possible introduction of entrance examinations for the Nigerian Law School; (20) the merits and demerits of making law a second-degree course; (21) synergy between the Bar and academia and the role of practitioners in legal training; (22) utilisation of ICT for effective law teaching and learning; (23) motivation and welfare of law teachers; (24) the poor culture of legal research and weak institutional support; (25) essential skills for effective law teaching; (26) emerging law modules and modernising legal curricula; (27) whether Nigeria has too many or too few lawyers; (28) teacher–student relationship ethics and standards; (29) brain drain among law teachers; (30) the effect of insecurity on legal education; (31) the state of Legal English and whether it should be mandatory throughout undergraduate study; (32) self-assessment of law teaching methods; (33) curriculum development and implementation challenges; (34) piracy in academic publishing; (35) ethics and integrity in academic writing; (36) the fight against plagiarism; (37) the role and effectiveness of the NUC and CLE in regulating legal education; (38) comparative studies on global best practices in legal education regulation; (39) the role of law teachers in promoting justice, ethics, and good governance; (40) inter-faculty collaboration and synergy in legal education; (41) standards and transparency in the award of professorships; (42) management and administration of law faculties; (43) the development of mock and moot trial programmes; (44) externship and internship policies; (45) modes of delivery and management of law examinations; (46) balancing law teachers’ careers with their personal and family lives; (47) motivation and reward systems for outstanding law students; (48) the growth and sustainability of law clinics; (49) issues around sabbaticals and academic exchanges; and (50) other emerging issues crucial to the advancement of law teaching and learning in Nigeria. These fifty areas (though not exhaustive) reflect the true business of NALT and define the intellectual agenda that its conferences should prioritise if the Association must remain relevant, effective, and true to its founding objectives. These are the true businesses of NALT; not the endless recycling of general national topics that have no bearing on its statutory objectives.

(6). The Way Forward: Turning the Annual Conference into an Annual Conscience

NALT’s failure is not intellectual; it is directional. Its conferences overflow with talent, yet suffer from misplaced focus. To reclaim its relevance, NALT must redirect its agenda toward advancing legal education quality and pedagogy; fostering ethical teaching and research culture; strengthening synergy among regulatory bodies; improving teacher welfare, training, and motivation; and aligning legal education with the demands of a globalised legal market, among others. Until NALT transforms its Annual General Conference into an Annual General Conscience, it will remain eloquent but empty: rich in rhetoric, poor in relevance.

Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (udems)
Lawyer; Law Teacher; Member, NALT; &
Proctor, Reality Ministry of Truth and Justice (TRM).

[email protected].

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Kachi Okezie, Esq.

For years, Nigeria has teetered on the precipice of a security abyss. From the scorched earth tactics of Boko Haram in the Northeast to the predatory kidnappings of bandit groups in the Northwest, and now the encroaching shadows of the Lakurawa and ISWAP, the Nigerian state is fighting a multi-front war for its very soul. Yet, as the nation bleeds, a discordant and dangerous note continues to ring out from the pulpits of Kaduna.

Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a man whose clerical robes once commanded respect, has increasingly transitioned from a self-appointed mediator to a sophisticated apologist for the very forces tearing the federation apart. His recent denunciation of Nigeria’s security cooperation with the United States marks a definitive crossing of the “red line.” It is no longer possible to view Gumi’s interventions as mere eccentric peacemaking.

When a prominent figure actively seeks to sabotage international alliances essential for dismantling terror networks, while simultaneously laundering the image of mass murderers, his rhetoric shifts from dissent to a form of ideological complicity. The Nigerian government’s continued silence is no longer an act of political patience; it is a dereliction of its primary duty to protect its citizens.

To understand the danger of Gumi’s current stance, one must look at the long and troubling trajectory of his involvement in global and domestic security crises. This is not a man who accidentally stumbled into controversy; his history suggests a pattern of proximity to radicalism that the Nigerian state has consistently chosen to ignore.

In 2010, the world was introduced to the darker underside of Gumi’s international connections when he was arrested and detained for over six months by the Saudi Arabian government. The arrest was not a local whim but a direct request from the United States government. American intelligence, while investigating the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, discovered that Gumi had been exchanging emails with the young terrorist shortly before his failed attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

The details of that case remain a chilling reminder of the stakes involved. Abdulmutallab, then only 23, was carrying a device designed to kill 289 innocent people in retaliation for what he called “US tyranny.” He was inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, a notorious Al-Qaeda cleric. That Gumi was the one corresponding with such an individual should have been a permanent stain on his reputation and a red flag for Nigerian intelligence. Instead, Gumi was held under house arrest in Mecca until the Nigerian government, led by then-Vice President Namadi Sambo, leveraged diplomatic weight to negotiate his release.

While Gumi claimed innocence and alleged a global conspiracy against him, the fact remains that a sitting Nigerian administration expended precious diplomatic capital to bring back a man who was, at the very least, a person of interest in a global terror investigation. This was the first major instance of the Nigerian state choosing to protect a powerful clerical figure over the rigorous demands of global counter-terrorism standards. This historical shielding has seemingly emboldened him, creating a sense of untouchability that haunts our national security apparatus to this day.

Since his return and the subsequent escalation of the banditry crisis, Gumi has carved out a niche as the “bandit whisperer.” He has trekked into the deep recesses of the forests, not to demand unconditional surrender on behalf of the state, but to offer excuses for the inexcusable. In Gumi’s worldview, the “bandits”—men who raze villages, rape women, and execute schoolchildren—are merely “aggrieved” victims of neglect. He has consistently downplayed their atrocities, framing their violence as a justified reaction to socioeconomic marginalization or the loss of grazing lands. By doing so, he provides a moral shield for terrorists.

He has visited their camps, posed for photographs with men brandishing assault rifles, and returned to the cities to demand that the government pay them “compensation” and grant them amnesty. He insists they should not even be called criminals. This is not diplomacy; it is the legitimization of criminality. When a cleric of his stature treats a warlord as an equal stakeholder in a negotiation, he undermines the authority of the Nigerian state and the morale of the soldiers dying in the trenches to uphold it. He effectively tells the terrorist that their violence has earned them a seat at the table, and he tells the victim that their suffering is a secondary consideration to the “grievances” of their oppressor.

Gumi’s latest outburst targets the burgeoning security partnership between Nigeria and the United States. As the threat of the Lakurawa—a radical sect with links to Sahelian jihadists—grows, Nigeria has sought to leverage global intelligence, surveillance, and tactical support. This is a logical, sovereign decision by a nation under siege.

However, Gumi has characterized this cooperation as a submission to “imperial tendencies.” He claims that American involvement will act as a lightning rod, attracting anti-American extremist groups to Nigerian soil. This argument is not only intellectually dishonest but dangerously inflammatory. Nigeria is already the epicenter of some of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations. Boko Haram and ISWAP did not need “American imperialists” to justify their decade-long campaign of carnage. To suggest that seeking help to stop the slaughter is what “attracts” terror is a classic exercise in victim-blaming and mirrors the very rhetoric used by Abdulmutallab to justify his failed Detroit bombing.

Furthermore, Gumi’s proposed alternatives—Turkey, Pakistan, and China—reveal a profound naivety, or perhaps a more calculated desire to pivot Nigeria away from Western democratic oversight. While every nation pursues its own interests, Gumi’s suggestion that these specific countries offer a “safer” or “cleaner” partnership is baseless. Pakistan has spent decades grappling with the blowback of its own complex relationship with non-state actors; Turkey is deeply enmeshed in the fractured politics of the Middle East and Libya; and China’s security exports are often tied to opaque debt-traps and resource extraction. To discard a strategic partnership with the world’s leading intelligence power in favour of a haphazard pivot to the East—based solely on ideological resentment—is an insult to the professional intelligence community of Nigeria. It suggests that Gumi is more interested in ideological posturing than in the practical reality of stopping the next village raid.

The most irritating aspect of the “Gumi phenomenon” is not the man himself, but the vacuum of authority that allows him to thrive. For too long, the Nigerian government has watched from the sidelines. There is a palpable sense that the state is “sleeping on its watch,” paralyzed by a fear of the political fallout that might come from confronting a member of a powerful northern clerical family. This inaction has created a culture of impunity. When a regular citizen expresses dissent, they are often met with the full weight of the law. Yet, Gumi is permitted to traverse the country, meeting with wanted men, echoing their propaganda, and casting aspersions on the nation’s defense policy without consequence. This double standard erodes the rule of law.

The government’s “wait-and-see” approach has been interpreted by the terrorists as a sign of weakness. If the state cannot even silence the tongue of a civilian apologist who has a history of questionable international correspondences, how can it hope to break the back of an armed insurgency? Gumi’s rhetoric emboldens the forest-dwellers; it gives them the impression that they have an “advocate” in the city who can tie the government’s hands through public pressure and religious sentiment.

True sovereignty is the ability of a state to protect its borders and its people. When Sheikh Gumi suggests that Nigeria should avoid certain allies because it might “offend” the sensibilities of global extremist movements, he is advocating for a surrender of that sovereignty. He is essentially suggesting that Nigeria’s foreign policy should be dictated by the fears of what terrorists might think.

The “Red Line” has been crossed because Gumi’s activities have moved beyond the realm of free speech into the territory of national security risk. Free speech does not grant one the right to coordinate with enemies of the state or to actively sabotage the military’s international support structures. In any other nation facing an existential threat, such actions would be investigated as economic or security sabotage.

The time for “dialogue” with Gumi has passed. The government must now demonstrate the political will to uphold the integrity of the Nigerian state. This does not mean a crackdown on Islam or a suppression of legitimate northern grievances; rather, it means drawing a clear distinction between religious leadership and the promotion of anarchy.

The security agencies must investigate the nature of Gumi’s “mediations” with a fresh eye, considering his past links to international radicalisation. What information is being shared? Is there a financial trail involved in the negotiations he has facilitated? The public deserves to know if these interventions have truly saved lives or if they have merely funded the purchase of more weapons for the bandits. The government must officially and forcefully distance itself from Gumi’s rhetoric. There must be a clear communication strategy that refutes his claims of “aggrieved bandits” and re-centres the conversation on the victims and the necessity of state force.

Rather than being cowed by Gumi’s “imperialist” labels, the Nigerian government should deepen its cooperation with the US and other allies.modern Modern counter-insurgency requires technology—drones, satellite imagery, and cyber-intelligence—that Nigeria currently needs to bolster. National security is too important to be sacrificed on the altar of Gumi’s outdated geopolitical biases. If Gumi’s statements continue to incite disaffection against the military or provide material support to proscribed groups, the Ministry of Justice must be prepared to act. No one, regardless of their clerical standing or family lineage, is above the law. Nigeria is a nation of resilient, hardworking people who deserve to sleep without the fear of being dragged into the forest. They deserve a government that treats security as a non-negotiable priority, not a subject for endless debate with extremist sympathizers. Sheikh Gumi’s antics have become a distraction at best and a danger at worst.

By constantly shifting the blame from the killers to the state, and from the terrorists to our international partners, he has made himself a clog in the wheel of national progress. The silence of the Presidency and the security chiefs is being interpreted as complicity. To restore the nation’s dignity, the government must prove that the state still holds the monopoly on the legitimate use of force and the direction of national policy. The red line has been crossed. It is time for the government to wake up, stand firm, and remind both the cleric and the criminal that Nigeria is not for sale, nor is it up for negotiation with those who seek its ruin.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.