Fresh Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data released this week shows a sharp increase in federal government borrowing over the past year, while credit to businesses and households expanded only modestly.
The CBN said credit to the federal government climbed to N40.38 trillion in May 2026 from N22.99 trillion in May 2025 — a 75.6 per cent year‑on‑year increase. The bank also reported a month‑on‑month rise of N779.7 billion between April and May. Net domestic credit increased to N121.42 trillion over the same period.
By contrast, credit to the private sector — which covers loans to companies and households — rose only modestly to N81.04 trillion, remaining roughly double the stock of government borrowing in absolute terms but showing slower growth.
Economists and market observers say the divergence signals a crowding‑out effect, with banks favouring government securities over riskier commercial lending.
“When banks channel a large portion of available funds into Treasury bills and bonds, less credit is available for firms and consumers,” said an independent policy analyst. “That can slow investment and job creation, and over time constrain output.”
The shift also carries implications for inflation and interest rates. Government borrowing that is financed domestically can increase the effective money supply if the central bank accommodates funding needs or if liquidity is abundant, economists warn. More money chasing a given stock of goods tends to push prices up, particularly in food and transport — items that weigh heavily in household budgets.
The pattern of rapid public borrowing has raised concerns about partial monetisation of the fiscal deficit. Even with the CBN maintaining a tight monetary stance, heavy demand for domestic credit by the federal government can complicate efforts to rein in inflation. Higher demand for safe, liquid government paper also encourages banks to hold more sovereign debt, which offers attractive yields and perceived lower risk than commercial loans.
For the banking sector, the preference for government securities is understandable. Government instruments are generally viewed as low‑risk and often deliver reliable returns, especially when rates are elevated.
But that shift reduces banks’ incentives to expand lending to the real economy, analysts say, contributing to the sluggish growth in credit to firms and households.
Policymakers face trade‑offs. Increased fiscal spending financed by domestic borrowing may be used for essential public services, infrastructure and debt servicing. However, if not matched by improvements in production and supply, the result can be higher consumer prices and tighter financial conditions for private businesses.
Market participants will watch the CBN’s forthcoming statements and fiscal developments closely. Key indicators to monitor include the pace of private‑sector credit growth, Treasury yields, liquidity measures in the banking system, and monthly inflation readings. If private credit remains subdued while government borrowing grows, economists say Nigeria could see slower private investment, persistent price pressures, and upward pressure on interest rates.
Too little zeal will kill a job; either leave it undone or bungled. But too much zeal can as surely create a mess; derail a task, or rush over it. With emotion dominating, the overzealous man tends to keep scratching at the surface. Intolerance, a dismissive attitude, are regular traits of the overzealous. Little wonder, the overzealous has predilection for seeking shortcuts to the intended destination. This tribe of hardliners, we should observe with worry, are seriously at work in the build – up to the January 2027 presidential election. Their stormy hands are already rocking both the system and process.
As with football and religion, politics is plagued with fanaticism. How do you get a typical football addict to accept that there are other great sports aside the round leather field game? And how do you get English soccer fans, for instance, to appreciate that the English Premier League is not necessarily the best; may not be superior to other federation tournaments? It’s a similar tacky situation when we witness vocal calls for implementation of Sharia in a plural religious, multi cultural society such as ours.
But with the presidential poll getting closer by the day, hawkish politics is on the advance. Nothing better dramatises the threat than the continued attempt to shut the opposition out of the election. Last week, at the beginning of third week of June, this desperate, political plot took on wings of legalism. Essentially however, the action dressed up as legal invalidation of five opposition parties, is political. It is crude, brash politics with the singular aim of predetermining the presidential election. The target of the assault is the ADC with the clear intention of avoiding it’s formidable challenge. The script drips with the ink of overzealous loyalists, fanatics and extremists in the ranks of the establishment. Moderates in the ruling circle must be embarrassed by this anti – democracy agenda that seeks to rubbish the choice principle of electoral franchise.
The insensitivity in which this reckless agenda is woven is hard to grapple with. Regime succession is an integral part of the Nigerian crisis. Accordingly, it should be considered irresponsible of anyone embarking on a plot capable of destabilising the polity. The path to national pacification is political. It is a road that emphasises inclusiveness, equity and fairness. But so intoxicating can extremism prove, that actors who ought to be conscious of the lessons of history lose it’s sight. A sense of where we’re coming from, gives an indication of where we are.
There is a linkage between the present dispensation and the still – born Third Republic. The June 12, 1993 crisis was about power exclusion. And the eventual amend was political, not legal. For the general Abdulsalami Abubakar junta, the solution was to give a measure of accommodation to the part of the country wronged. Retired general Olusegun Obasanjo was thought to fit the bill and summarily released from prison. But before Obasanjo’s ultimate coronation, a significant development occurred. Alliance for Democracy, the southwest platform of June 12 movement, failed to meet the prescribed spread for registration as political party in the transition programme.
The Abubakar junta did not insist on legal disqualification of the AD. It approved the registration of AD as a political party. And the rest of the country, for the sake of peace and progress, acquiesced to the indulgence. The AD later became ACN. And a fusion of ACN and CPC resulted in the present APC. How ironic then that the foremost beneficiary of deliberate, national elasticity is the very same constituency working to block our electoral Strait of Hormuz! Sad. Alas, that’s the irrationality to harvest when fundamentalists reign.
Nor is the malaise restricted to the ruling party. If they had their way, the _Obidients_ would criminalise dissent from their hero’s presidential ambition, all over the southeast. For daring to stand by his party, the APC, Mr Joe Igbokwe was recently booed and taunted at Ladipo market, Lagos. From making social media punching bags of Works Minister, Dave Umahi and Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, the group has graduated to knocking Datti Ahmed, Mr Peter Obi’s running mate in 2023. And for an unbelievable moment, the cross – generations vanguard directed it’s abusive capacity at Seriake Dickson, the same man in whose hands, the fate of Obi’s party candidacy depended! Before the reconciliation of differences, Dickson had let it known that no presidential candidate was more qualified than himself, a stinging remark which import was probably lost on the _Obidients._
For their part, the intellectual wing of the movement has been busy with revisionism. In frantic deflection of the unfair charge of “tribalist support”, the wild claim of regional support for Obasanjo and other non Igbo candidates in the past is flaunted. In truth, this is half sophistry and half denial of the APGA’s mandates stolen by the PDP. In 1999, there were two presidential candidates, both of them Yoruba. By the singular fact of their common ethnicity, it is intellectually dishonest to project a vote for either candidate as instance of ethnic – blank politics by the southeast.
The only condition for establishing ethnic insulated voting would be the existence of a candidate of Igbo stock in the same election and who received fewer votes to those cast for a non Igbo candidate in the region! This was not the case in 1999. In 2003 and 2007 general elections, the APGA won majority of the votes from the southeast including in the presidential contest. It is only now convenient for some to forget that other sets of results were later produced to award victories to the PDP.
In a Press Release in July 2003, the Justice, Development and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in Anambra State described the official PDP victories as inconsistent with it’s monitored outcome of the poll. Significantly too, Abakaliki based Catholic priest, Rev Fr John Odey, captioned his book on the exercise: _This Madness Called 2003 Election_ . In Enugu State, the APGA’s Ugochukwu Agballa was on the way to recovering his governorship mandate when the courageous tribunal handling the petition was suddenly disbanded.
And the first task of the new tribunal was to reject the damning documents admitted by the first tribunal! It was a similar case of falsification of results in the southeast in 2007, with the Supreme Court split 4:3 on legitimacy of the presidential election. Robbed of victory in Imo State governorship in 2007, Abia State in 2015, with Martin Agbaso and Alex Otti as candidates respectively, APGA however clinched the Imo governorship in 2011 with Rochas Okorocha.
Party loyalty still dominates the voting pattern across the country. Even in advanced democracies, the concept of party “stronghold” adverts to voter tendency of political brand rather than candidate preference in elections. Given the background of APGA’s vibrance in the southeast, it follows that the region voted for the APGA presidential candidate, Emeka Ojukwu, in the authentic results. There is no reason to be apologetic about this. Ethnic identity is part of heritage, about our roots. It’s timeless educational theory that in exploring and understanding the world, you move from known to unknown.
In any case, if Mohammadu Buhari, with provincial mindset, could be President, why wouldn’t Ojukwu? Obi’s publicists and supporters should stop distorting history and base their advocacy on the candidate’s personal merit and achievements in office. And, has it occurred to the _Obidients_ that their propaganda of detribalised support for PDP calls into doubt Obi’s governorship mandate in Anambra State? Facts do not stop being facts because of change of season. And cool headedness should not yield to fanaticism.
Afuba is of Governance and Development Forge, Awka.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
‘There comes a time When we heed a certain call When the world must come together as one… We can go on Pretending day by day That someone somewhere will soon make a change We are all a part of God’s great big family And the truth, you know love is all we need… There is a choice we are making…’ (From ‘We are the world’ song by U.S.A for Africa 1985)
Permit me today to borrow from the brilliance of the 1985 iconic songwriters Lionel Richie & Michael Jackson, the brains behind the song, ‘we are the world’ for suffering Africans in Ethiopia at the time. And here is why I need to use parts of the lyrics to appeal to our people to borrow from the political decisions of Ondo State party leaders who just did something remarkable: organised election of a technocrat, a professor of medicine to spend barely a year at the Senate.
I believe that Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa of Ondo state, I confirmed led the party to support election of that significant technocrat felt we can’t continue “to pretend day by day that someone somewhere will soon make a change”. Yes, “there comes a time”, when leaders “should heed certain calls” that the wards even in our politics of consensus must “come together as one” to elect or select our best to represent us.
I believe that sometimes such decisions may not be popular with the traditional bigots. But leaders should note that most significant decisions are unpopular at inception. I think our leaders should always support our best to represent the rest. That is why I would like to recommend to political leaders the Team Aiyedatiwa’s model that led to the election of Professor Dayo Faduyile to the Senate the other day.
Here is what I mean: Senator Dayo Faduyile, Professor of Medicine at LASUTH and former NMA President, embodies the technocrat model Nigeria’s 21st century senate needs. A new kind of senator takes the oath: On Wednesday, June 24, 2026, Senate President Godswill Akpabio administered the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office to four new senators following bye-elections.
Among them: Senator Dayo Faduyile, APC, Ondo South. He polled 68,474 votes to succeed Jimoh Ibrahim, PhD, now Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. But Faduyile is not a career politician. He is Adedayo Faduyile, MBBS, MBA, MSc, FWACP, FCP (ECSA), Professor in the Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine at the Lagos State University College of Medicine and Honorary Consultant at LASUTH. He is a former National President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). He is Chairman of the Governing Council and Pro-Chancellor of the Federal University of Education, Kontagora.
His arrival in the Red Chamber is more than a political win. It is a test case: Can a proven technocrat, with 40+ academic publications and a record of policy advocacy, translate expertise into law? If the 10th and 11th Senate are to be “purpose-driven” for a 21st-century Nigeria, Faduyile’s model matters.‘
‘The making of a scholar-clinician’ Faduyile’s CV reads like a diagnostic chart of Nigeria’s human capital. MBBS from UNILAG in 1996. Residency in Anatomical and Molecular Pathology at LUTH, 2002–2007, serving as Chief Resident. MSc Cell Biology & Genetics, UNILAG, 2008. Diploma in Forensic Human Identification from the Royal College of Physicians, UK, 2015. Fellow of the College of Pathologists of East, Central and Southern Africa, 2016.
Since 2007 he has taught pathology and forensic medicine at LASU College of Medicine (LASUCOM) while consulting at LASU Teaching Hospital (LASUTH). He has over 40 peer-reviewed publications. That is not résumé padding. It is 27 years of daily exposure to what kills Nigerians: misdiagnosis, poor cancer screening, forensic gaps in criminal justice, and a health system that bleeds doctors.
‘The unionist-policy maker’ As NMA President 2018–2020, Faduyile did not just issue communiqués. He “successfully engaged with the presidency and National Assembly to influence critical health legislation”. He flagged that “over 48 doctors have been kidnapped in two years”. He warned that “unqualified foreign-trained doctors causing havoc in Nigeria”. He pushed back on treating doctors “like civil servants” and argued for a National Health Service Commission. That is legislative temperament: data, advocacy, and institutional memory. The Senate does not need more lawyers who quote statutes. It needs members who have written the policy briefs others now debate.
‘The administrator’ Faduyile was Special Adviser on Health to the Ondo State Government of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu. He is Pro-Chancellor, Federal University of Education, Kontagora. He understands budgets, subvention, and the politics of appointments. Akpabio told new senators to “familiarise themselves with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution and the Senate Standing Orders 2023”. Faduyile already speaks that language.
‘Why the 21st century senate needs technocrats’ Nigeria’s challenges are technical before they are political. Power, health, education, AI, climate, and forensic security require senators who can read a white paper, not just a party manifesto.
‘Evidence-based lawmaking’ During COVID-19, Faduyile as NMA President explained why asymptomatic patients were a problem for hospitals. He balanced public panic with medical fact: “Asking for appropriate protective equipment as prerequisite… does not constitute professional malpractice”: A Senate with Faduyiles will not pass Infectious Disease Bills without public hearings. It will demand epidemiology, not emotion.
‘Sector-specific insight’ Nigeria “needs between 3,000 to 4,000 medical schools to address the deficit”. That line did not come from a lobbyist. It came from a professor who trains doctors. When the Health Committee debates the Medical and Dental Council Act, Faduyile can explain why foreign-trained doctors fail licensing exams. When Appropriations Committees debate teaching hospital funding, he knows LASUTH’s MRI broke down for 11 months and why.
Credibility with professionals The NMA Ondo State called his election “a victory for the medical profession and for quality representation”. Technocrats rebuild trust between the National Assembly and professional bodies. ASUU, NBA, ICAN, and NSE will talk to a Senate that has their colleagues inside.
Global competitiveness Akpabio called the Senate “the most elite club in the world”. Elite is not about ‘agbada’. It is about capacity. The US Senate has physicians, engineers, astronauts. Singapore’s parliament has professors. Nigeria’s Senate needs members who can argue genomics with WHO and fintech with the IMF.
What he brings to the Red Chamber: health security as national security As NMA President, he linked doctor kidnappings to national stability. In the Senate, he can sponsor a Health Worker Protection and Retention Bill: special insurance, hazard allowance tied to inflation, and a National Health Service Commission to remove doctors from civil service bureaucracy. That is how you keep 300,000 doctors instead of exporting them. ‘Forensic medicine and justice reform’: Faduyile is a forensic pathologist trained in the UK and US. Nigeria’s criminal justice system convicts on confession, not forensics. A Forensic Services Agency Act would standardise autopsies, DNA, and crime scene management. His 2014 training at the Academy of Forensic Medical Sciences, London gives him standing to write it.
‘Education and research funding’: As Pro-Chancellor of Federal University of Education, (FUE) Kontagora, he knows TETFund gaps. He can push for 1% of Consolidated Revenue to Research & Innovation modelled on Brazil. His 40+ publications mean he won’t let “research” become a budget line for SUVs for the federal legislators.
Diaspora brain linkage, not just brain drain: He highlighted “high-level diplomatic experience” from engaging the presidency and NASS. Nigeria’s Senate needs a Diaspora Professional Practice Act: allowing Nigerian doctors abroad to do three-month rotations at home without losing foreign licences. Faduyile has the network to draft it.
Fiscal prudence from clinical logic A pathologist learns triage: do the most good with limited resources. That mindset is missing in appropriation. Faduyile’s MBA from FUTA plus medical training means he can read both a balance sheet and a blood sheet. He will ask: Why is N21bn spent on a Presidential Clinic when LASUTH needs a PET scan?
The risk: Will the system change him or will he change the system? The Senate can socialise technocrats into politics. Committees can become sinecures. Oversight too can become oversight-seeing. Faduyile’s test is simple: If he were to be there for four years, would Nigerians point to a Faduyile Act the way they point to the Mohammed VI Complex in Morocco?
The President of the Senate, Akpabio reminded new senators they “now represent the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not your respective political parties”. For Faduyile, that is literal. A virus does not ask if you are APC or PDP. A stroke does not check your ward. The blueprint: five ways the senate can replicate the Faduyile model
Professional constituencies: Reserve 10% of Senate seats for election by professional bodies: NMA, NBA, COREN, ICAN. Let engineers vote for engineers.
Sabbatical senators: Allow professors to take 4-year leave from universities to serve, with job guarantees. LASUTH will take Faduyile back in 2028. That reduces fear of loss.
Technical hearing rule: Any bill on health, tech, or science must have a public hearing chaired by a senator with relevant expertise.
Publication disclosure: Like assets, senators should publish Open Researcher and Contributor iD (ORCID ID), a free, unique 16-digit digital identifier that permanently distinguishes you from other reeseachers across the globe. Faduyile has 40+ papers. Let voters see who reads and who doesn’t.
Outcome KPIs: Akpabio should assign Faduyile to chair a Senate Delivery Unit tracking three health Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): maternal mortality, doctor-to-patient ratio, and local vaccine production. Report quarterly. Anger, expertise, and the purpose-driven senate we need. Nigeria missed the 2026 World Cup because we normalised failure. We cannot miss the 21st century because we normalised an amateur and mediocre legislature.
Senator Dayo Faduyile is not a saviour. He is a signal. The NMA said, “we have no doubt that you will bring the same dedication, professionalism, and passion for excellence that defined your tenure in the NMA to the Senate”. That is the standard.
A purpose-driven Senate is not one that shouts “aye” louder. It is one that can model a health budget, sequence a genome, audit a forensic lab, and still explain it in Ikoya Ward in Okitipupa, Ondo State. Faduyile campaigned on “grassroots connection and high-level diplomatic experience”. That duality is the job. If he succeeds, the Senate of 2027 with more Faduyiles should look like a faculty meeting: physicians, engineers, economists, data scientists, soldiers. If he fails, we will know why: the chamber has a way of turning professors into politicians and doctors into patients of the system.
But for now, his swearing-in is a prescription. Nigeria’s diagnosis is clear: shortage of expertise in power. The treatment: elect more Faduyiles. I hope the political parties are reading this for the purpose of voter education.
The 21st-century Senate will not be built by anger alone. But without the disciplined anger of technocrats who are offended by waste, decay, and death-by-policy, it will not be built at all. Senator Faduyile, Professor of Pathology, has taken the oath. The next oath is ours: to demand that he, and those like him, dissect the laws of Nigeria with the same rigour he uses on tissue samples. Behold, the country is on the table. And the prognosis depends on the surgeon.
Senator Faduyile’s swearing-in is a rare chance to test a thesis: that Nigeria’s biggest deficits aren’t money or manpower, but expertise in the room where laws are made. If he brings to the senate the same rigour that he brought to pathology and the NMA, then the Red Chamber just got a pathologist for the body politic. The real work starts when voters start asking every aspirant: Show me your ORCID, not just your poster.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
A former British doctor has been arrested in Ecuador in connection with the killing of Colombian model Natalia Villalba Angarita, whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase concealed in a rented apartment in Bogotá, in a chilling case that has sparked international attention.
Colombian authorities confirmed the arrest of 46-year-old Matthew Foster-Smith following the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice. He is expected to face extradition proceedings to Colombia, where prosecutors intend to charge him with aggravated femicide and concealment, alteration or destruction of evidence.
The body of 36-year-old Angarita, a model from Cúcuta in northern Colombia, was discovered by cleaners on June 22 after the rental period for her seventh-floor apartment in Bogotá’s Chapinero district expired. Investigators said the shower had been left running, and the victim’s remains were found inside a grey suitcase in the bathroom.
Before his arrest, Foster-Smith had denied any involvement in the killing, telling British media that he was watching England’s World Cup match against Croatia at an Irish bar on the night in question. “I was watching England versus Croatia on a big screen in an Irish bar, so it wasn’t me,” he said.
He added that after the match he went to a shopping centre, bought an ice cream, returned to the bar to watch another game and later went to bed alone. However, Colombian prosecutors said evidence gathered during the investigation suggests Foster-Smith entered the apartment while the victim was alone, assaulted her and later attempted to conceal the crime.
“Pursuant to an arrest warrant obtained by a prosecutor from the Bogotá Sectional Office, and following the issue of an Interpol Red Notice, Ecuador’s National Police apprehended a British citizen at Quito International Airport,” prosecutors said. “He is alleged to be responsible for the death of a 36-year-old woman on June 18 in an apartment located in the Chico neighbourhood of northern Bogota.
“Evidence obtained by the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) indicates that he allegedly entered the apartment where the victim was alone, physically assaulted her until she died, and manipulated the body to place it inside a suitcase. He then carried out various actions aimed at concealing what had happened, altering the crime scene, and fleeing the location.”
Authorities said Foster-Smith was located through a joint operation involving Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office, Migration Colombia, Interpol and Ecuadorian authorities. Local reports indicated investigators traced his phone activity as he allegedly attempted to purchase a ticket to Europe.
According to investigators, Angarita initially rented the apartment between June 3 and June 7 with a man from Texas before extending her stay until June 21. Foster-Smith reportedly entered the apartment on June 17 and left the following day. Security camera footage allegedly captured him carrying bedsheets to a laundry area before leaving the building. Investigators are examining CCTV footage, building access records and forensic evidence recovered from the apartment.
Angarita’s mother, Claudia, said she became concerned after her daughter stopped answering her calls on June 19. “My daughter had been living in Bogota for 17 years,” she said, adding that they spoke “all the time.” “All we want is for the truth to come out.” Her body has not yet been released to the family.
Foster-Smith has a previous criminal record in the United Kingdom. In 2020, he was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to stalking a former partner and sharing revenge p0rn0graphy.
Following his release, he was convicted again for stalking another woman in Dorset after repeatedly following her, loitering near her workplace and breaching a restraining order. In October 2024, Bournemouth Crown Court sentenced him to two years and two months in prison. At the time, Detective Constable Thomas Norman said the victim had “continued to live in fear” and that her life had been “destroyed” by Foster-Smith’s behaviour.
If extradited and convicted in Colombia, Foster-Smith could face an aggravated femicide conviction, an offence that carries a prison sentence of between 40 and 50 years. The case has drawn comparisons to the 2023 murder of Colombian DJ Valentina Trespalacios, whose body was also found inside a suitcase before her killer was later convicted and sentenced to more than 42 years in prison.
Depressing new details have emerged in the deaths of two women and four children found at an apartment in Mechanicville, New York, where investigators say evidence points to a suspected poisoning and a possible additional weapon used in the killings.
Police confirmed that a handwritten note was discovered at the scene, alongside preliminary autopsy findings suggesting a cocktail of medications was involved, as well as an unidentified weapon that caused “sharp force injuries.”
Authorities said they responded on Tuesday evening to the apartment where they found the bodies of a grandmother, her daughter, and four grandchildren. The deceased were identified as 64-year-old Amy Steadman, her 44-year-old daughter Sarah Myers, and Myers’ four children: Harper, 13, Hudson, 11, and 10-year-old twins Gavin and Gracelynn.
Mechanicville Police Chief Bill Rabbit said the handwritten note recovered at the scene points to Steadman as a suspect in the deaths. He added that the bodies were not formally identified until after autopsies were conducted on Wednesday, following concerns from neighbours who had not seen the family for weeks.
One local resident who contacted police reported noticing “the smell of death” coming from the apartment, along with flies gathering around the windows and air conditioning unit. Investigators believe the victims may have been dead for up to 13 days, although the exact time of death has not yet been confirmed.
Preliminary toxicology and autopsy results indicate that multiple prescription and over-the-counter medications were used in what authorities described as intentional poisoning. Chief Rabbit said at a press briefing that one of the children also suffered “fatal sharp force injuries.”
“Evidence recovered during the investigation, including a handwritten note and other circumstantial evidence, strongly suggests that Amy Steadman was involved in the deaths,” Rabbit said. “However, final determinations regarding accountability will be made only after all investigative findings, toxicology results and medical examiner reviews have been completed.”
The children’s father, who had been engaged in a custody dispute with Sarah Myers, said he was due to collect them and take them back to Utah on June 30, just days after their bodies were discovered. “No parent wants to outlive their children. It breaks my heart,” he told The U.S. Sun.
The Three-Month Sprint was initially conceived as a two-part series.
In the first part, I journeyed back to the formative moments that shaped my intellectual vocation, from a chance discovery of Sigmund Freud in the University of CalabarLibrary to the enduring influence of Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci. The essay explored how a journalist’s persistent quest to understand why Nigeria persistently bleeds eventually produced three original frameworks that have now entered global scholarly discourse.
The second part examined a vocabulary that did not exist before the 91-daySprint began. The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of State Decay (TSD), and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI) each demanded new language because the realities they sought to capture had outgrown inherited categories. That essay traced this new grammar, charting the concepts it generated, the architecture of collapse it described, and the possibilities of renewal it suggested.
I sat with both essays for some time and arrived at an unsettling conclusion.
What was produced in 91 days—from March 8, when The Sunday Stew debuted as a syndicated column, to June 7, when DSI was unveiled—appears to have very few parallels not only in media history but also in the wider ecosystem of knowledge production. When we scan global media history for newsrooms that developed their own native analytical frameworks, formulated original theories, and built proprietary measurement systems, the precedents are remarkably few, elite, and historically significant.
The Financial Times of London developed its Excess Deaths Tracking Framework during the global crisis of 2020. The resulting dataset became so methodologically robust that epidemiologists, researchers, and the World Health Organisation relied on it as an authoritative scientific reference.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK confronted a challenge. Governments and security establishments were either unwilling or unable to disclose the full human and territorial consequences of covert drone campaigns in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The Bureau built a tracking system whose data became foundational material for scholars of security studies and international relations.
In the US, ProPublica demonstrated how investigative journalism could migrate into computational analysis. It constructed proprietary databases, reverse-engineered opaque government disclosures, and developed independent analytical models to test racial bias within judicial algorithms and institutional outcomes.
The Economist developed the Big Mac Index in 1986. What began almost playfully evolved into one of the most recognisable quantitative tools in modern economics. Foreign Policy magazine, in collaboration with the Fund for Peace, produced the Fragile States Index, which has become a widely used instrument in discussions of state vulnerability. The Atlantic Council and Chatham House have similarly generated influential frameworks and models, though both possess the infrastructure of major policy institutes rather than primary newsrooms.
These examples are useful analogies, all situated within the Global North. But they remain partial analogies. None of them developed more than one original framework, despite their considerable institutional advantages. Most operated with substantial funding, dedicated research teams, established data infrastructures, and access to extensive networks of scholars and subject-matter experts. Their projects often evolved over long periods—sometimes years—of iterative development, testing, and refinement.
By contrast, what emerged from the Sundiata Post91-daySprint was not a single instrument but an interconnected trilogy: a conflict model in The Triad, a macro-theory in TSD, and a quantitative measurement matrix in DSI. Each framework builds upon and reinforces the others, creating an integrated architecture rather than a collection of isolated ideas.
Perhaps most remarkably, this did not originate within a university department, a grant-funded policy institute, or a donor-supported research centre. It emerged from an independent scholar working inside a functioning newsroom in the Global South, with no external institutional support. That distinction matters because it challenges long-standing assumptions about where original knowledge can be produced and who possesses the authority to produce it.
I therefore, found myself confronting an unusual possibility. What does it mean when an independent scholar working within an active newsroom—not a university, not a think tank, not a grant-funded research institute—produces within 91 days a conflict framework, a macro-theory of state decay, and a quantitative index designed to measure sovereign decoupling?
What does it mean when these frameworks enter international repositories, begin attracting scholarly engagement, and acquire algorithmic visibility within emerging AI knowledge systems almost simultaneously with their publication?
I believe the answer lies in a concept that has quietly animated this entire Sprint: intellectual sovereignty. For too long, journalism in much of the Global South has occupied the role of information transmission. We report events. We document crises. We quote experts. We consume theories produced elsewhere and apply them to realities they sometimes explain only imperfectly.
But journalism need not occupy that position indefinitely. Journalism can investigate and theorise. It can report events and construct frameworks. It can interpret reality and produce original analytical instruments capable of entering global conversations.
Digital journalism, in particular, has altered the economics and geography of knowledge production. The barriers separating the newsroom from the research laboratory, the university seminar room, and the policy institute have become increasingly porous. A determined newsroom can now collect data, build databases, formulate concepts, test propositions, publish globally, and distribute knowledge instantaneously.
The implications are profound.
The central question of this Sprint is therefore not whether three frameworks emerged within 91 days. The more important question is what such an experience reveals about the future of journalism itself.
Perhaps the age of the newsroom as a passive consumer of theory is giving way to an era of the newsroom as a producer of theory. Perhaps the journalist of the digital age is no longer merely a chronicler of events but also an architect of explanatory systems.
Perhaps intellectual authority no longer belongs exclusively to universities, think-tanks, and heavily funded research institutes. Perhaps it increasingly belongs to whoever can ask difficult questions, pursue evidence rigorously, think independently, and create concepts that help society understand itself.
If that is indeed what these 91 days signify, then the story is larger than one columnist, one newspaper, or even three frameworks. It may represent an emerging model of intellectual production—a model in which a newsroom from the Global South demonstrates that original theory, indigenous frameworks, and quantitative innovation can arise from outside traditional centres of knowledge authority.
It may be necessary to document this experience carefully. For scholars, journalists, and future practitioners, it may eventually be useful to describe it simply as the Sundiata Post Model.
Milestones of a 91-Day Sprint
Before March 8, Sundiata Post was a regular online newspaper known principally for credible journalism, authentic news reporting, and informed commentary. But on that day, ‘The Sunday Stew’ debuted as a syndicated column, and it changed our trajectory.
In that inaugural edition, which paid tribute to the late economist and public intellectual, Dr Chris Asoluka, I wrote:
”This column will examine faith, leadership, culture, personality, and the unseen forces shaping our society’s visible outcomes. It will appear every Sunday, unhurried, unfiltered, and thoughtful.
”Some weeks it will challenge you. Other weeks, it may unsettle you. Occasionally, it may simply provoke a smile.
”But it will always be honest.”
The outcome has gone far beyond that initial plan.
It was the third edition, on March 22, that launched The Insecurity Triad. What began as an attempt to understand why Nigeria’s insecurity appears persistently self-reproducing evolved into an original analytical framework for categorising conflict in Nigeria and the wider Sahel. The series ran for five consecutive weeks.
Three days later, on April 26, TSD was unveiled as a theory of state structure and sovereignty for the Global South. It ran for three consecutive weeks and sought to explain not merely how states fail, but the structural mechanisms through which sovereign authority progressively decouples and rival forms of order emerge.
The SPIU immediately moved into action. It secured registration as an affiliate institution across major global scholarly repositories, including Harvard Dataverse, operated by Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science; Zenodo, developed by the European Council for Nuclear Science (CERN) and the European Commission; the US-based Social Science Research Network (SSRN) owned by Elsevier; the Open Science Framework (OSF), based at the University of Maryland; Mendeley, also owned by Elsevier; Germany’s Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR); Figshare, based in UK and the US and owned by Digital Science, a technology company; HAL Science, the French open-science platform; and ScienceOpen based in Germany and the US.
The SPIU also established an institutional presence on ResearchGate, the world’s largest academic networking community, as well as Academia.edu and Google Scholar.
On May 12, Harvard Dataverse published and archived The Insecurity Triad as an original analytical framework for Nigerian and Sahel security analysis. Other scholarly platforms subsequently published and disseminated the framework, extending its global accessibility and discoverability.
Academic and Policy Circle Adoption
On May 10, Collins Nweke, a Brussels-based policy analyst, became the first external voice to deploy the Insecurity Triad in public discourse — urging in a BusinessDay op-ed that Europe not treat insecurity in Africa as a distant problem. Two weeks later, on May 24, Dr Omoniyi Ibietan, a communication scholar and public relations strategist, announced that the Triad had shaped his theoretical framing in a peer-reviewed paper on crisis communication in the Agatu crisis.
Then came June 7.
On the 91st day after the debut of ‘The Sunday Stew’, DSI was unveiled. With it, an intellectual trilogy was completed: a conflict model, a macro-theoretical formulation, and a quantitative index designed to measure sovereign decoupling.
Ninety-one days earlier, none of this existed—not the frameworks, not the vocabulary, not the research unit, not the institutional footprint in global repositories.
What began as a weekly newspaper column had, within three months, evolved into an experiment in reimagining digital journalism itself.
What the Algorithms Are Saying
Perhaps one of the most intriguing developments of this Sundiata Post91-day Sprint is what the algorithms themselves are saying. Within three months, Google AI and Microsoft’s AI systems—two of the world’s largest artificial intelligence ecosystems—have mapped and profiled not only the three frameworks themselves—The Insecurity Triad, TSD, and the DSI—but also some of the concepts and metaphors that emerged in the process of developing them. Terms such as Institutional Mirage and The Sunday Stew as well as the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), which did not exist in this intellectual context before the Sprint began, have acquired algorithmic recognition, indexing, and direct association with the broader conceptual architecture from which they emerged.
This matters because modern knowledge discovery is increasingly mediated by algorithms. Search engines, AI assistants, and large language models are rapidly becoming gateways through which students, researchers, journalists, and policymakers encounter ideas. Once concepts become sufficiently visible and linked to identifiable bodies of work, they acquire digital permanence. They become discoverable.
The significance, therefore, extends beyond recognition. It means that an undergraduate searching for concepts relating to insecurity in the Sahel, a doctoral student exploring theories of state decline, or a policy analyst trying to understand the relationship between formal sovereignty and lived reality can now encounter frameworks that originated not in a major Western university or an established think tank, but in an independent newsroom in the Global South.
This is not merely an exercise in digital visibility; it is an emerging form of intellectual presence. It demonstrates that in the digital age, knowledge diffuses more rapidly, and intellectual influence is no longer determined solely by geography or institutional pedigree.
A Note on This Journey
Through this disciplined 91-day Sprint, we have demonstrated that the African newsroom does not have to remain a passive consumer of externally generated indexes, imported analytical frameworks, and structural theories produced elsewhere. We can build our own research engines, codify our own realities, develop our own conceptual vocabularies, and establish our own algorithmic authority on the global stage.
What began on March 8 as a commitment to deep, weekly insight culminated on June 7 in something far larger than originally envisaged: a repeatable blueprint for media-based knowledge production, intellectual sovereignty, and algorithmic discoverability in the digital age. We call it the Sundiata Post Model.
This is the concluding part of The Three-Month Sprint series. It marks the completion of an intellectual trilogy conceptualised, developed, and formulated in Abuja and exported to Africa and the Global South in the service of research, knowledge creation, and a deeper international understanding of the dynamic interplay of power, social structures, and sovereign realities in a rapidly changing world.
Three months ago, these frameworks did not exist. Today, they are part of global scholarly repositories, algorithmic knowledge systems, and an expanding conversation about how societies understand conflict, state decay, and sovereignty.
The larger lesson may be the simplest one: intellectual rigour has no geographical address, and the production of original knowledge is not the exclusive preserve of the world’s traditional centres of authority. Sometimes, it can emerge from a newsroom in Abuja and, within 91 days, travel through repositories, algorithms, and scholarly networks into the wider architecture of global knowledge.
Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.
•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), and an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer at ScienceOpen. He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis as well as the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes ‘The Sunday Stew’, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.
Nigeria has been blessed over the years with a rich supply of towering judicial intellect. The second Chief Justice of post-colonial Nigeria, Taslim Olawale Elias, for instance, was the country’s first law professor. In 1949, he became the first African to take a Ph.D. in law from the University of London. That was five years after his contemporary at the Supreme Court of Nigeria and first African Chief Justice of post-colonial Uganda, Egbert Udo Udoma, became one of the first Africans to take a Ph.D. from Oxford University.
Taslim Elias and Egbert Udo Udoma did not have a monopoly of rarefied qualifications in the annals of the Nigerian judiciary. George Baptist Ayodola (GBA) Coker, who also ended up at the Supreme Court, received his Ph.D. from the University of London in 1955. 11 years later, in 1966, Augustine Nnamani received his doctorate degree in law from the London School of Economics. His career in the law would take him from the chambers of the Attorney-General of the Federation to the bench of the Supreme Court where he served with distinction.
Chief Justice Elias is not the only academic of note or law professor to have sat at the highest levels of Nigeria’s judiciary. Adolphus Karibi-Whyte who retired as a senior Justice of the Supreme Court, began his judicial career as an academic in University of Lagos. Okay Achike was a professor of public law at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Niki Tobi, another notable former Justice of the same court, was Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Maiduguri.
These were by no means the only teachers ever to serve at the highest levels of Nigeria’s judiciary. At the Supreme Court, Karibi-Whyte found himself senior to Chukwudifu Oputa, one of the most celebrated judicial careers ever produced by the country, who was his teacher in high school.
These extraordinary judicial careers decorate the country’s law reports with timeless precedents. Despite the durability of their decisions and the coherence of their reasoning, none of their judicial figures managed to earn a brand as such.
In the firmament of Nigeria’s judicial careers, therefore, there has existed for a long time this lingering vacuum of a coherent judicial brand in need of a name. One man changed that.
Born in 1965, in Okpoma, Yala Local Government Area of Cross River State, Peter Lifu became a lawyer in 1990, the same year in which Augustine Nnamani died. Two years later, he was his own boss, running his own private law office in Ibadan, capital of Oyo State. From the famous university located in the same city, Peter later received two graduate degrees in political science and law, respectively. He would later join the faculty of law at the same university, specializing in public and international laws.
In 2013, Peter Lifu began his judicial career as a judge of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN). Two years later, in 2015, he was switched from the NICN to become a judge of the Federal High Court.
On the bench of the Federal High Court, he was set up in a courtroom located at an “uncomfortable intersection between law, politics, and (adverse) public perception.” As if connected to a peculiar judicial magnet, Peter Lifu established a reputation for attracting the cases with the most exciting political flavour. The man himself quickly made a name for himself as a judge whom the ruling party and allied interests could depend on.
When a faction of a political party goes shopping for a court order to short circuit party governance, they usually find a ready mall in his courtroom.When a politician is looking for a judge to knee-cap his opponent under a ruse of law, the court of Peter is likely to be their forum of choice.
How these cases manage with such predictability and effortlessness to end up on Peter’s docket must be down to a judicial code shared exclusively between him and the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court.
In a career spanning 13 years on the bench, Peter “has become one of the most discussed judges in Nigeria’s recent judicial history”, no mean achievement for a serving judge in the lower reaches of the judicial hierarchy. He has achieved this on the back of a reputation for what has been described as “a worrying willingness to disregard the very constitutional guardrails that hold our democracy together.”
Peter Lifu’s brand of judicial decision making seems to be protected by a variety of clientelism that clothes total disregard for guardrails with the kind of impunity reserved for organized crime captains. As a recognizable brand, there is only one name for it. It is Lifusprudence.
Lifusprudence is not a science. In many ways, it is everything that judicial decision making should not be. It is transparently predictable, purchasable, and pre-determined. The country got a clinical demonstration of the capabilities of Lifusprudence recently in a rather disturbing case seeking to de-register five political parties. Section 225A of Nigeria’s constitution grants to the Commission “power to de-register a political party.” It does not place it under a duty to do so.
This distinction between a power and a statutory duty is one that should be easily clear to any judge. Apparently, Peter Lifu did not get the memo.
On 15 June, he ordered INEC to de-register the parties. To achieve this result, Peter Lifu did something remarkable. He re-drafted the constitution. Under section 225A, INEC’s can de- register a political party that fails to win certain minimum of seats in various elections or fails to meet registration requirements. In this case, the claim was that the parties involved had failed to achieve the minimum threshold of seats in elections.
But the evidence before the court showed conclusively that the parties had in fact crossed the constitutional thresholds of electoral performance. It was also in evidence that many of those who won seats on the platform of the parties had defected subsequently to the ruling party.
Peter’s response? “Section 225A contemplates those who won and remain and not those who carried their mandate to another political party.”
There was no authority for this proposition – not logic; not precedent; not the text of the constitution. This was casual judicial invention for a pre-determined end. On its face, the judgment was a model of Lifusprudence – corrupt, convenient, and casuistic.
The only rationale hidden in his 103-page text was the wondrous assertion that “proliferation of political parties….should be discouraged.” Even this line runs contrary to existing jurisprudence.
But Lifusprudence is uniquely supreme in its design and trajectory. It does not reckon with even the discipline of judicial hierarchies or precedent.
25 days before the judgment, on 22 May 2026, the Court of Appeal in Abuja issued an order “staying further proceedings” in the case before Peter Lifu. In his judgment, Peter reduced this to “arrest of judgment” and claimed that “the rules of court do not have provision for arrest of judgment.” But the terms of the order by the Court of Appeal were clear: they had ordered proceedings stayed. In Peter’s head and for his purpose, judgment is not part of the proceedings.
The Court of Appeal was constrained to describe his conduct as “the highest form of judicial impertinence”. It also called Peter “a misfit to the bench.” Another writer called him an “embarrassment” to the judiciary. Columnist, Owei Lakemfa, called him the author of “anarchism in judicial robes.” Major newspapers joined the Court of Appeal in calling Peter Lifu a “judicial rascal”.
The suggestion of mischief or cheekiness implicit in the use of “judicial rascal” to describe Peter Lifu misunderstands and misrepresents Lifusprudence. Lifusprudence is the dark art of taking the prudence out of the science of law. It is underpinned by casual wilfulness under colour of judicial pronouncement.
That is what makes it so dangerous because although it reads as law, Lifusprudence is actually network crime. The surprise is that it has acquired a distinct identity in a system that should exist to suppress it. Now, as the country gets ready for elections, it is the season for Lifusprudence to thrive and revel in the joint enterprise between politicians and Peter, their judicial hitman.
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.
Objective: To establish how Nigeria moved from fighting bandits to negotiating with them.
And this phase answers one critical question:
How did we get here?
PART ONE
From Armed Robbery to Rural Terror
Banditry in northwestern Nigeria did not begin as an organised insurgency.
Security experts generally trace its origins to armed cattle rustling, communal disputes over land and grazing routes, illegal mining, and the proliferation of small arms following conflicts in the Sahel. By the early 2000s, criminal gangs operating across Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and parts of Niger State had begun attacking remote villages, stealing livestock and abducting wealthy individuals for ransom.
For years, these crimes were treated largely as rural criminality rather than an organised national security threat.
That assessment would prove costly.
As security weakened, criminal groups became increasingly sophisticated. They acquired military-grade weapons, established camps in vast forests such as the Rugu, Kamuku, Kuyanbana and Sububu forests, imposed taxes on rural communities, and created networks capable of launching coordinated attacks across multiple states.
By the late 2010s, kidnapping had evolved into a multi-billion-naira criminal enterprise, with schoolchildren, commuters, traditional rulers, health workers and even religious leaders becoming regular targets.
2014–2016
The Violence Escalates
Several developments transformed banditry from local criminality into a regional crisis.
Among them were:
Collapse of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms.
Growing unemployment among young men.
Illegal mining financing armed groups.
Weak policing across rural communities.
Easy access to sophisticated weapons flowing from Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
Entire villages began paying protection levies.
Farmers abandoned their land.
Schools shut down.
Communities emptied.
Yet government responses remained largely reactive.
2017
Zamfara Becomes the Epicentre
By 2017, Zamfara State had become synonymous with mass killings.
Entire communities were razed.
Hundreds were killed.
Thousands fled.
It was during this period that serious debate began over whether military force alone could stop the violence.
Some traditional rulers, religious leaders and politicians quietly initiated contacts with armed groups in an effort to reduce attacks.
These early contacts laid the groundwork for what would later become formal peace negotiations.
2018
The First Major Peace Initiative
The administration of Governor Abdulaziz Yari launched one of Nigeria’s earliest structured dialogue efforts with armed bandit groups.
Several meetings reportedly took place involving:
traditional rulers
security agencies
community leaders
representatives of armed groups
The objectives included:
surrender of weapons
release of kidnapped victims
cessation of attacks
reintegration into communities
Government officials argued that many fighters had turned to crime because of poverty and longstanding disputes with farming communities.
Critics disagreed.
They argued that dialogue was rewarding violence while victims received little or no justice.
Within months, many of the agreements began to collapse as fresh attacks were reported.
2019
Amnesty Becomes Official Policy
Following the inauguration of Governor Bello Matawalle in Zamfara, negotiations expanded dramatically.
His administration openly embraced dialogue with what it described as “repentant bandits.”
Weapons were reportedly surrendered.
Some fighters publicly renounced violence.
Several camps participated in reconciliation meetings.
Government officials expressed optimism that peace had finally arrived.
The policy attracted international attention.
Supporters argued that military victories alone had proved impossible.
Opponents questioned why people accused of mass killings were being rehabilitated rather than prosecuted.
As optimism grew, so did scepticism.
Fresh attacks soon followed.
2020
Peace Begins to Fracture
Despite repeated declarations that many armed groups had embraced peace, violence returned.
Communities that had celebrated peace agreements once again reported:
kidnappings
village raids
cattle rustling
killings
Security analysts increasingly warned that some groups were exploiting negotiations to regroup, recruit and acquire supplies.
Others argued that agreements involved only certain factions while rival commanders continued attacking civilians.
Government officials maintained that dialogue remained preferable to endless warfare.
2021
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi Enters the National Debate
Islamic scholar Sheikh Ahmad Gumi emerged as one of the country’s most prominent advocates for dialogue with armed groups.
His visits to bandit camps generated nationwide controversy.
Gumi argued repeatedly that many fighters were willing to negotiate and should not automatically be treated as terrorists.
He warned that declaring every bandit a terrorist could close channels for peaceful engagement.
His position divided public opinion.
Supporters saw him as a mediator trying to save lives.
Critics accused him of legitimising violent groups responsible for atrocities.
The Federal Government continued military operations while some state governments maintained varying degrees of engagement with armed groups.
2022
Terrorism Designation Changes the Conversation
A significant legal turning point came when Nigerian courts recognised bandit groups as terrorist organisations following applications by the Federal Government.
The designation expanded the legal powers available to security agencies and strengthened the basis for prosecuting suspected members under anti-terrorism laws.
It also complicated the question of dialogue.
Could governments continue negotiating with organisations now legally classified as terrorists?
That question remains unsettled.
2023–2025
Negotiation and Military Force Run Side by Side
Despite intensified military offensives, several northern states continued exploring various forms of dialogue, community engagement and reintegration.
At the same time:
kidnappings reached record levels
schools continued to close
communities paid protection levies
rural displacement increased
Security policy increasingly reflected two competing philosophies:
One advocated overwhelming military force.
The other maintained that some form of dialogue remained necessary.
Neither approach produced a decisive end to violence.
2026
New Questions, Old Controversies
The debate intensified after allegations emerged that Katsina State had sponsored Hajj for bandit leaders, claims the government firmly denied.
Days later, seven suspected Boko Haram and ISWAP commanders were arrested upon their return from the pilgrimage, according to the Minister of Interior.
Although the government insisted improved identity systems enabled the arrests, fresh questions emerged.
How had the suspects travelled without earlier detection?
Why were they identified only after the pilgrimage?
At the same time, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi again criticised the government’s designation of bandits as terrorists, arguing that some groups had previously demonstrated a willingness to negotiate and warning that closing avenues for dialogue could worsen insecurity.
His remarks came as fresh attacks continued across parts of Katsina, Zamfara and Niger States, where communities reported killings, mass abductions, the destruction of schools and the imposition of multimillion-naira levies despite ongoing security operations.
Phase One Conclusion
Over nearly a decade, Nigeria’s response to banditry has evolved from conventional policing to military campaigns, peace negotiations, amnesty initiatives and reintegration programmes. Yet violence has persisted, often shifting rather than disappearing. The result is a profound national dilemma: how should a democratic state confront armed groups responsible for grave crimes while remaining faithful to the rule of law and the rights of victims?
That question forms the basis of the next phase of this investigation.
Mixed reactions have trailed the interim suspension imposed by the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) on Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN.
In my respectful view, the hand of those who have questioned the decision is strengthened when the issue is viewed against the antecedents of disciplinary regulation within the Nigerian legal profession. The issue is not whether Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, should ultimately be exonerated or sanctioned—that is a matter for the appropriate disciplinary process.
Rather, the real concern is whether the LPPC has applied a consistent and principled standard in resorting to the exceptional measure of an interim suspension before the disciplinary process has run its course.
The profession’s recent history raises legitimate questions about consistency.
The legal profession has witnessed previous controversies involving senior members of the Bar, including office holders within its own regulatory architecture.
During the 2022 Saipem controversy, serious allegations connected with the law firm of Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, then Chairman of the Body of Benchers, generated widespread public concern. Two successive Presidents of the Nigerian Bar Association publicly called upon him to recuse himself from presiding over the Body of Benchers while the disciplinary process was pending. Yet there was no immediate suspension of his rank as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria or any comparable interim disciplinary measure. Instead, the disciplinary machinery was permitted to determine whether there was sufficient evidence implicating him personally.
The Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) ultimately declined to proceed against him personally for want of evidence linking him to the impugned conduct, although disciplinary sanctions were later imposed on the partner directly responsible.
Similarly, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, has himself previously been the subject of serious regulatory action. The EFCC froze his professional fees in a widely publicised matter, yet the Court of Appeal ultimately vindicated his position, holding that the seizure of his professional fees was unlawful. That history serves as a caution against equating allegations, however serious or publicly sensational, with established professional misconduct.
The present London property litigation undoubtedly contains grave judicial findings. However, the gravity of those findings does not answer the anterior question: why has the LPPC considered it appropriate to impose an interim suspension before the disciplinary process has reached its conclusion when previous controversies involving equally prominent members of the profession did not attract comparable treatment?
Whether one agrees with the outcomes in any of these cases is beside the point.
The rule of law demands consistency in administrative decision-making. Like cases should be treated alike unless a rational and publicly articulated basis exists for distinguishing them. If interim suspension is now to become the governing standard whenever allegations of sufficient gravity arise, the LPPC ought to articulate that standard with clarity and demonstrate that it is being applied uniformly rather than selectively.
Otherwise, the measure risks creating the appearance—not necessarily the reality—of unequal treatment, thereby undermining confidence in the fairness, predictability, and institutional integrity of the disciplinary process.
The decision also gives rise to a deeper conceptual difficulty.
Chief Ozekhome, SAN, has not been suspended from legal practice. He remains entitled to practise as a legal practitioner, to appear before the courts, advise clients, and discharge all the professional obligations imposed upon every member of the Nigerian Bar. The only deprivation is his entitlement to practise as a member of the Inner Bar.
That distinction itself invites a fundamental question. If the allegations are considered sufficiently grave to justify an extraordinary interim suspension from the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria before the disciplinary process has been concluded, why are they not considered sufficiently grave to warrant an interim suspension from legal practice altogether? Conversely, if the allegations have not yet been judicially or disciplinarily established to the extent necessary to justify depriving him of his licence to practise law, what principled basis justifies the premature withdrawal of the professional distinction attached to the rank of SAN?
The point is not that the LPPC lacks authority over the rank of Senior Advocate. It plainly possesses that authority. Rather, the question is whether the exercise of that authority in advance of a final disciplinary determination produces a coherent regulatory outcome.
The decision appears to create a two-tier conception of professional character: one standard for members of the Inner Bar and another for every other legal practitioner. Yet the Legal Practitioners Act and the Rules of Professional Conduct impose the same fundamental ethical obligations upon every lawyer, irrespective of rank. Honesty, integrity, fidelity to the court, and good character are not elevated duties owed only by Senior Advocates; they are universal obligations binding upon every member of the profession.
If character is indeed indivisible, then its regulatory assessment ought also to be coherent. Either the allegations justify restrictions on the right to practise because they disclose a present risk to the administration of justice, or they await determination through the ordinary disciplinary process before any punitive consequence is imposed. To conclude that a lawyer possesses sufficient character to continue practising before every court in Nigeria while simultaneously determining that he lacks sufficient character to retain the honour of the Inner Bar before those same allegations have been finally adjudicated is a position that requires far more careful justification than the LPPC has thus far provided.
That tension further reinforces the criticism that the interim suspension is not merely severe but premature. It risks transforming what is intended to be a protective administrative measure into an anticipatory sanction, imposed before the disciplinary process has reached the stage at which findings of professional misconduct have been properly made.
The issue, therefore, transcends Chief Mike Ozekhome.
Every lawyer, whether a member of the Inner Bar or the Outer Bar, has a vested interest in a disciplinary regime that is principled, predictable and consistently applied. Confidence in professional regulation is not built by the severity of sanctions but by the certainty that like cases will be treated alike and that extraordinary measures will be exercised only in accordance with clearly articulated standards.
If the LPPC’s decision marks the beginning of a new regulatory philosophy, then the profession deserves to know that this philosophy will be applied uniformly, irrespective of personality, influence or public sentiment. If, however, no such principled distinction can be articulated, then the criticism is not merely about Chief Ozekhome; it is about preserving the coherence, legitimacy and moral authority of the disciplinary system itself.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
Cape Verde etched their name into FIFA World Cup history on Friday, becoming the smallest nation ever to reach the tournament’s knockout stage after holding Saudi Arabia to a goalless draw in their final Group H clash in Houston.
The island nation, with a population of just over 600,000, secured qualification from Group H after finishing unbeaten, collecting three points from three draws against Spain, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia.
“We are small,” said Vozinha, Cape Verde’s 40-year-old goalkeeper who embodied the grit of his nation. “But we have big hearts and we are fighters.”
The tournament debutants pulled off one of the World Cup’s biggest surprises by playing pre-tournament favorites Spain to a scoreless draw in its opener. They followed that up by scoring their first goals of the World Cup in a 2-2 tie against Uruguay.
With Friday’s draw, they finish undefeated on three points and take second place in Group H behind 2010 winners Spain and a point ahead of two-time World Cup champions Uruguay.
Cape Verde will face defending champions Argentina next up in a round-of-32 matchup in Miami Gardens, Florida, on July 3.
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