By Kachi Okezie, Esq

In Llanwern, the steelworks to the East of Newport, my South Wales home city, the mood is upbeat. Likewise in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, where the UK’s last two remaining blast furnaces are located.

The ports upgrade and steel supply deal signed on Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 10 Downing Street between the UK and Nigeria is good news and a welcome break from the ongoing frustration with Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Newport is a Labour stronghold, represented by my friend Jessica Morden, who has held the seat since 2005, focusing on local issues such as steel industry support and cost-of-living help. 

At the other end, the tattle among Nigerians arising from the  deal swings like a  pendulum between two extremes: industrial realism and the geography of regional equity. Those in support of President Tinubu’s reforms under his Renewed Hope Agenda are quick to point to the deal as a momentous take-home from the President’s record-breaking state visit as guest of King Charles III, the first such visit by a Nigerian President in 37 years.

Those opposed to the deal, on the other hand, question the need for yet another port project in Lagos which they say is already congested. They point to the need to decentralise critical infrastructure such as seaports and prioritising other parts of the country fir such projects.

Whatever one’s persuasion, the £746 million agreement to modernise the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports is something of a masterclass in the “new realism” of 21st-century diplomacy. Certainly for Britain. Described by Prime Minister Starmer as a “historic” milestone, marking the first state visit by a West African leader to the United Kingdom in 37 years, the deal moves Nigeria’s maritime strategy from a memorandum of understanding to a multi-billion naira engineering reality. 

Yet, beneath the diplomatic high-fives lies a complex matrix of industrial survival, geopolitical maneuvering, and an intensifying domestic debate over whether this investment serves a truly national interest or a parochial, Lagos-centric agenda.

To evaluate this deal fairly, one must first strip away the language of development assistance. For the United Kingdom, this is not an act of international charity; it is a cold-eyed exercise in national economic self-interest. Through UK Export Finance (UKEF), the British government is guaranteeing a loan from Citibank on the EXPLICIT condition that at least £236 million of the resulting contracts flow back to British firms. Tim Reid, CEO of UKEF, hailed the deal as a landmark that demonstrates the agency’s ability to “unlock opportunities” for British businesses in high-growth markets.

The standout beneficiary is British Steel, which secured a £70 million “record-breaking” contract to supply 120,000 tonnes of steel billets from its Scunthorpe plant. For a Labour government navigating a difficult 2026 election season and under pressure to prove its “Securonomics” strategy can save the country’s foundational industries, this is an essential political win. 

UK Trade Secretary Peter Kyle emphasised that the deal would strengthen British Steel’s global standing while directly supporting jobs and economic growth in Scunthorpe. British Steel CEO Allan Bell was equally emphatic, describing the contract as a “major boost” for the company and its employees.

There is a pointed historical symmetry here: while the British steel industry has spent decades weathering the storms of privatisation and ownership changes, from Corus to the complex stewardship of the Mittal family, it is now being revitalised by Nigerian infrastructure debt. It is a sharp irony that while Mittal’s venture into Nigeria’s Ajaokuta Steel Mill famously ended in a decade of legal gridlock and a massive $496 million settlement for the Nigerian state, it is now the UK’s own industry that is finding stability through a Nigerian port project. The UK is essentially “buying” its own industrial resilience by guaranteeing Nigeria’s credit.

Beyond the balance sheets, there is a compelling geopolitical logic. If the UK does not “grab” these opportunities, China certainly will. The nearby Lekki Deep Sea Port stands as the primary example of the alternative model: a $1.5 billion marvel where the China Harbour Engineering Company holds a majority stake and a 45-year operating concession. The UK deal offers a sovereignty-preserving alternative; by providing guarantees rather than direct equity-for-debt swaps, the UKEF model allows the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to retain 100% ownership. Nigeria is not “selling the farm”; it is borrowing the tools to fix it. While the £236 million earmarked for British firms functions as a “Scunthorpe Surcharge,” it is a premium many strategists argue is worth paying to avoid the long-term geopolitical strings attached to the Chinese model.

However, as the United Kingdom celebrates its industrial coup, a more strident criticism is bubbling over in Nigeria. The central question being asked from Port Harcourt to Calabar is: Why Lagos again? To many Nigerians, this deal looks less like a national necessity and more like a parochial, even nepotic, project designed to favour President Tinubu’s political heartland. Lagos is already over-served with maritime infrastructure, they argue. Between the legacy ports of Apapa and Tin Can and the newer Lekki facility, the city is a logistical juggernaut. Meanwhile, the seafront states of Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Abia, and Delta remain trapped in a state of perceived government-sponsored underdevelopment. The ports of Calabar, Warri, and Port Harcourt have faced decades of neglect, with critics arguing that their exclusion is a deliberate choice to centralise economic power, according to crtitics. 

While the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, argues that the project aligns with broader economic goals to improve port operations and transparency, the counter-argument is that this focus is regionally imbalanced. If the South-South ports are not dredged and their quay walls are not fortified with the same urgency as those in Lagos, they can never compete, nor contribute to national economic activity, productity and GDP. By doubling down on the Lagos corridor, the administration is perceived as further marginalising the rest of the country, leaving potential maritime hubs like Calabar, Port Harcourt, Onne, Warri anf the Ibom Deep Sea Port to languish.

Ultimately, the UK-Nigeria port deal is a study in trade-offs. President Tinubu has stated that the deal will strengthen Nigeria’s position as a key maritime hub in West and Central Africa, providing the infrastructure to lower costs for the entire federation. The United Kingdom has secured a much-needed outlet for its steel and a strategic foothold in a vital market. But for Nigeria, the success of this deal will not be measured by the number of jobs it creates in Llanwern or Scunthorpe. It will be measured by whether the government uses the revenue generated from these modernised Lagos ports to finally breathe life into the dormant quays of the Delta and the South-South. 

Without that regional balance, the deal remains a brilliant piece of British business, but a potentially divisive chapter in Nigerian politics.

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

Three politicians—America, Britain, and Nigeria—died in a stampede over oil, influence, and global validation.

In the afterlife, they were received by Angel Gabriel, who said:

“You have lived by power and persuasion. As politicians, you have surely sinned. Before you enter Heaven, you must pass through the Swamp of Lies.”

As in life, America stepped forward first, eager and confident. He waded in and found the swamp barely reached his ankles. He smiled to himself: At least, whatever I did, I told my lies in the name of a greater good.

He turned to look back.

Britain was behind him, sunk to his knees in thick mud. America frowned and shouted:

“This makes no sense! You cheated, you enslaved and colonised everyone; you mastered empire, shaped the world in your image, bent truth to your will, and yet you are only knee-deep?”

Britain raised a finger to his lips and replied calmly:

“Lower your voice. I am standing on Nigeria… and he does not even know.”

The joke, as I have told it here, is an adaptation drawn by me from an anonymous source, its plot and characterisation I reworked to fit my own telling. Like all enduring humour, it turns the mirror inward. Look closely at the mud of lies: Britain stands, still, on the back of a submerged Nigeria.

This is not about being patriotic or not; and it is neither self-hate nor self -denigration. A joke about oneself is an invitation to self-examination and self-recognition, to laugh, and in laughing, to reckon. In his essay, ‘Liberty, Laughter and the Law: Jests and Jokes as Symbols of a Free People’ (May 1948), Nat Schmulowitz captures this insight with enduring clarity:

“The most salutary of all laughter is the laughter which we laugh at ourselves, for this kind of laughter means always that we have laid bare and discarded some weakness, some power of injustice in ourselves. A vain man, a frightened man, a bigoted man, or an angry man, cannot laugh at himself or be laughed at; but the man who can laugh at himself or be laughed at has taken another step towards the more perfect sanity which brings peace on earth and goodwill toward man.”

Nigeria is the joke, and, tragically, the laughter that sustains it.

I grew up hearing England described as Ilu ọba—the king’s country. It unsettled me each time I heard that. Were our own obas not kings? Why should a distant land exclusively own royalty which we have here in abundance?

President Bola Tinubu’s recent visit to England, as guest of King Charles III, seemed to answer that question of my childhood. In that carefully staged moment, one truth quietly surfaced: there is only one king—the King of England.

And King Charles played his role to perfection: You saw him when he took our president’s hand and led him along the walkway. He did it with a faintly paternal air as though steadying our president, and in that gesture, quietly defining the terms of the relationship. The one that you plan to sell, you must first feed and make secure.

Then came the substance.

On Thursday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted President Tinubu at Downing Street, where both countries sealed a deal tied to the refurbishment of the Lagos Port and TinCan Island Port. Under the £746 million arrangement, British Steel will supply 120,000 tonnes of steel for the work, with UK Export Finance guaranteeing the loans on the condition that at least 20 percent of the contracts go to British firms.

That last part channels no less than £236 million of the total sum back to the UK.

In simple terms, a substantial part of the “loan” effectively returns to the lender’s pocket. The principal is known, but the interest on the loan is not publicly stated and is not publicly known.

What do all these mean? I asked experts and they told me that the implications of the deal are significant, and not entirely comfortable.

They said the deal sits at the intersection of development finance and economic sovereignty.

They said that at its core, the contract is tied financing; the recipient must spend the funds on goods and services supplied by the lender. Broke Nigeria gets funding (via UK Export Finance), but on the condition that a big portion of the project must be executed by British firms.

They said the conditions attached to the deal is textbook paternalism: “We will help you but we will also decide how that help is used.” Alágbárí l’ògá múgù. They will use múgù’s money to eat àrósò.

They said that the loan structure carries several consequences. These consequences, they said, include reduced procurement freedom for Nigeria. By this they meant that, for the project, Nigeria cannot freely choose the most competitive suppliers globally.

They said that requiring at least 20 percent UK sourcing, the deal limits open competition, potentially excluding cheaper or more efficient alternatives from other countries, or even from local firms.

They mentioned capital flight and contrasted it with local retention. A guaranteed share of the contract (at least £236 million) flows back to UK companies. And what does that mean? It means less of the project value circulates within Nigeria. It means fewer opportunities for Nigerian contractors and manufacturers. It means reduced multiplier effect on the local economy. It means Nigeria is owing more than it is borrowing. It means the lender is also the receiver of the loan.

And, it is significant that the deal came in the same week the UK launched what it called a new steel strategy to revamp its steel industry, produce up to 50 percent of its own steel, cut imports by 60 percent, and impose a 50 percent tariff on excess imports.

UK Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, said: “I’m announcing really ambitious targets for use of British steel in the British economy, from 30 percent to 50 percent.” The strategy, according to him: “The UK government’s vision is a revitalised steel sector…that can provide a secure supply of steel to meet their customers’ needs, support our national security, and provide high-quality, secure and long-term jobs.”

The new strategy landed with the Nigerian deal, same week, different scenes. Coincidence? Someone said in encounters between power and need, coincidence is seldom accidental. Analytical psychologist, Carl Jung, says there are no coincidences; only connections we have not yet understood.

You hear all this and you ask: where is Nigeria’s own steel ambition in this deal? Ajaokuta? What, exactly, does Nigeria gain from this forward-and-backward loan arrangement?

Does this visit echo something more troubling—like leading the bull, gently, to the abattoir?

If that is it, then it is safe to say that the moment where King Charles III takes the president’s hand suggests a subtle hierarchy, paternal, guiding, almost instructional. The hand-holding is no longer metaphorical, it becomes contractual guidance. If you like, call it master–servant logic in economic form. The walkway movement intuited, the economics quietly confirmed.

The loan arrangement reinforces the asymmetry of benefit and control in international relations. Consider this: the UK hosts the Nigerian president; it secures export markets for its steel and contracts for its firms, sustains jobs in places like Scunthorpe, and advances its industrial policy. Nigeria, in return, comes home scented with the lingering perfume of King Charles’s courtly embrace.

At another level, the Nigerian child loves the white king. President Yar’Adua visited the White House in December 2007 and declared the visit eternally unforgettable:

“This is a moment that I’ll never forget in my life.” He blew that into his host’s microphone. President Tinubu did not use those cringing words but he said much more than that with swag and steez.

Critics of Tinubu’s London tourism liken him to Rome’s Emperor Nero who “sang and plucked his lyre while the capital of the world burnt down around him.” They say Tinubu should not have flown abroad while his own Rome faced the fire of terrorism and mass murder in Maiduguri. He has ignored the critics. He is aware that whatever he does won’t reduce the amount of libation daily poured at his shrine.

Indeed, those who call Tinubu Nero may, in fact, be paying him a compliment.  In ‘Nero Reconsidered’, Edward Champlin describes the notorious Roman Emperor as a very “popular monster” who died at 30 and was for centuries wanted back by “everyone.”

He wrote: “The truth is that outside of court circles and Christian congregations, Nero was vastly popular, both before and after his death…Whatever else he may have been, Nero was a clever man, and one who was much more attuned to the psychology of his people than were some disgruntled elitists or angry sectaries.”

Nigeria has many of such “disgruntled elitists (and) angry sectaries” who criticise every act of the hardworking president. 

Like Nero, our president loves the sound of his lyre and plays it undisturbed even if the capital is on fire. He understands the psychology of Nigerians. He knows they love him and his ways and would dance with him even if the country becomes Gaza at the hands of the enemy. He knows he did no wrong going to the House of Windsor to sell Nigeria.

Perhaps what we deserve is not really democracy. Perhaps it is what Thomas Jefferson might have recognised, in spirit, as monocracy, a curious blend of monarchy and democracy, a system based on the personal rule of an individual without legal or constitutional constraints. It is the reason power gathers today around one figure with a reverence that borders on the sacred.

Our president loves the British monarchy. We all do, and it showed in the ecstacy that governed our UK news throughout last week. We should also go further to make king out of our president – king with real powers. The Americans, whose system we borrowed, wrestled openly with the same tension. At the dawn of their republic, the absence of a king felt almost unnatural. Vice President John Adams worried aloud that without the trappings of monarchy, authority itself would wither. “Take away thrones and crowns from among men,” he warned, “and there will be an end of all dominion and justice.” He even fretted that the plain title ‘President’ would invite contempt from the world.

 “What,” John Adams asked, “will the common people of foreign countries, what will the sailors and soldiers say, ‘George Washington, President of the United States’? They will despise him to all eternity.”

Never mind that there were dissenting voices to what Adams professed. They were fierce, irreverent, unyielding. They cautioned: “We did not dethrone King George only to enthrone King Congress.” And in his pamphlet, ‘Common Sense’, Thomas Paine stripped monarchy of its mystique, reducing it to accident and conquest, its grandeur a story too fragile to survive scrutiny.

Between Adams and Paine lies the enduring argument: the pull of monarchy against the (in)discipline of democracy.

And today with King Donald Trump, is America not back to what they spent centuries running away from? Monarchy.

It is within that unresolved tension that we must read the recent encounter in London.

When the king held the president’s hand, it was a small gesture, fleeting, almost incidental, yet heavy with suggestion. It lingered just long enough to invite interpretation: not quite two figures moving in equal stride, but one, however gently, steadying the other across an unseen threshold. In that clasp lay a metaphor too telling to ignore. The king owns the president.

With words you can enchant and capture. So, when the king decided to go Naija in his speech, he went WAZOBIA, strictly Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo. First, what he called a Yoruba proverb: Rain does not fall on only one roof. Next, according to him, a Hausa proverb: When the music changes, so does the dance. He decided to be so predictable with what came next. He called it an Igbo proverb: knowledge is never complete; two heads are better than one.

The king invoked not one, but three strands of Nigerian wisdom: shared fate, shifting power, and collaborative knowledge. But proverbs, like history, are layered. The rain falls on all roofs, but not all roofs are built alike. Some are tiled; others are thatched. Between Britain and Nigeria lies that uneven architecture—so uneven that when the rain comes, one household becomes the drainage for the other.

The steel-port arrangement is, in effect, one party’s way of using the other to shield its steel industry from the vagaries of a troubled global economy.

The future of Nigeria-Britain relations will be decided in how the tension between partnership and hierarchy is resolved. If the rain must fall on both roofs, then fairness demands that the two roofs be strengthened. If the music has truly changed, then both nations must help compose it. And if two heads are indeed better than one, then neither should seek to use the other for money ritual.

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

A mother sits her son beside her, looks into his eyes and tells him:

“Son, listen to me carefully. I want to tell you some important things.”

“Okay, Mom, what is it?” The boy replies and the lesson class becomes a conversation in morality.

“First, always be kind. Speak gently and respect everyone, young or old.”

“Even if someone is not kind to me?”

“Yes. Kindness shows your true strength. Second, always tell the truth. If you make a mistake, don’t be afraid.”

“Will you be angry if I am honest?”

“I may correct you, but I will be proud of your honesty.”

“Third, learn to be responsible. Clean your space, finish your work.”

“Even small work matters?”

“Yes. Small good habits make a strong person. Be thankful for your food, family, and every small blessing.”

“I will remember, Mom. Thank you for teaching me.”

When something profound happens, it does not end in the moment; it travels. It finds voice in story, in song, in art.

The foregoing mother-son conversation, drawn from a fictional animation circulating online, echoes that journey. It sharpens my reflection on Morocco’s national team captain, Achraf Hakimi, and the quiet, stubborn discipline of a son guided by his mother’s word.

“My mother told me to refuse the Africa Cup of Nations trophy. I am officially refusing it, and I hope my teammates do the same. We had our chance to win it, but we couldn’t,” he said at the weekend.

In our tradition, we say a child who listens to the mother hears tomorrow before it speaks. Hakimi, it would seem, listened.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) at the weekend announced a decision to overturn the result of the 2026 AFCON final, awarding Morocco a 3–0 victory after ruling that Senegal had forfeited the match.

The ruling, swift, severe, and not without loads of criticisms, was CAF’s ultimate sanction for Senegal’s brief walk-off in Rabat, staged in protest against a disputed stoppage-time penalty awarded to Morocco. It was a decision that, while administrative in form, has left a lingering question about justice in the game.

Hakimi heard CAF and said no. This medal is not mine. There is, in his refusal, a lesson older than football and deeper than sport: that honour is not what is handed to you, but what you are willing to decline. He chose principle over profit; he insisted that Senegal (who won on the field) were the rightful champions. In doing so, he drew a clear line between legality and legitimacy. It is a distinction which Nigeria’s electoral process, and its dispute resolution system, often struggles with.

“Snatch it, grab it, and run with it.” You remember who said this, when and where and the aftermath. We are hearing even scarier promises as we prepare for the next set of elections.

To the utterer of the 2023 erudition in political banditry of snatching, grabbing, and running with the snatched, Hakimi offers a rare lesson in winning or losing with integrity. He offers even more to Nigeria’s entire political class, its electoral umpire, and the judiciary.

Elections may be decided through technicalities, procedural rulings, or judicial interpretations. But beyond the letter of the law lies a deeper question: does the outcome reflect the will of the people?

The stance underscores a simple truth: a decision may be lawful, yet lack moral authority. And when that happens, it risks public rejection.

This is where the judiciary comes in. Like CAF in this case, courts, particularly the Supreme Court, are final arbiters. But finality is not the same as credibility. When rulings appear to contradict what the public perceives as clear outcomes, institutions risk eroding trust. CAF today finds itself embarrassed, its authority intact on paper, but weakened in legitimacy, after both the supposed “winner” and the perceived “loser” rejected its decision.

For INEC, the lesson is clear: credibility must go beyond process to reflect genuine outcomes. For the judiciary, it is a call to ensure that justice is not only done, but seen to align with fairness and common sense. For politicians, the message is simpler still: power gained without legitimacy will always sit uneasily like a bird perched on a fraying rope.

It is in moments like this that sport reasserts its higher purpose. The Hakimi decision is one more reason many insist that sport exists to repair a world repeatedly broken by politics and politicians. And the people know. They will always choose contest over crisis, peace over carnage.

The insight is not new. The French historian, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, offers a vivid illustration in his masterwork, ‘La Décadence: 1932–1939’. Writing of 1930s France, he observes that “the regiments that had won the First World War received less applause from French crowds when they paraded on July 14 than did the champions and the main pack of riders of the Tour de France that same month.”

The telling comparison, cited in Paul Dietschy’s study, Creating Football Diplomacy in the French Third Republic, 1914–1939, captures a timeless truth: the crowd, weary of war, turns instinctively to play; exhausted by the theatre of power, it seeks the fairness of the field.

Hakimi has shown that leadership is not just about winning; it is about honouring the truth of the contest. And sometimes, the strongest statement a player can make is to refuse a victory that is not truly theirs.

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

London of the 1850s, like Lagos 150 years later, was a city of wastes and disease. It was the world’s largest city, and was a theatre of filth; its River Thames swollen with human waste, with dead animals, and industrial discharge. London’s stench entered everywhere, including literature. Charles Dickens writes in ‘Little Dorrit’: “Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river.”

The odious smell of 1858 is preserved on the website of the London Museum in these words: “A very smelly summer in the city. Modern London can be a grimy place. It often smells. But 1858’s Great Stink was on another level.” Curtains were soaked in chemicals to mask the smell; the wealthy fled; disease spread. Then, compelled by necessity, the British state acted. Within weeks, legislation was passed, and a modern sewer system began to take shape; one that still undergirds London today.

I am writing this for Lagos and other cities of filth. Some cities die by dirt because authorities choose politics over duty, they fear to act.

Cities we admire today for their cleanliness did not arrive there by accident; they chose it, fought for it, and sustained it. They, too, had their seasons of filth.

In January 1951, writing on environmental sanitation in Canada, J. R. Menzies, Chief of Public Health Engineering in Ottawa, observed that “there are still far too many open dumps on the outskirts of our urban areas which are an eyesore, a nuisance, and a breeding ground for flies and vermin.” Seventy-five years on, those words could well describe our cities.

Lagos may not be the filthiest city in Nigeria, but it is a city-state that calls itself Centre of Excellence. Excellence and sludge should not sleep in the same bed. But in Lagos, gutters are clogged with refuse, canals are choked with plastic, walkways are dumpsites. These are the realities our streets preserve, not by accident, but by the daily choices of citizens who normalise the nuisance of filth.

Last week, an overwhelmed Lagos State government announced the reintroduction of the monthly sanitation exercise, to run from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. on the last Saturday of every month, beginning April 2026. It is a policy that once defined civic discipline in the state. Now, like many things resurrected from memory, it returns to a chorus of both approval and resistance.

Critics of monthly sanitation exercise argue that it infringes on personal freedom, citing a court judgment. Freedom, they say, must not be curtailed, even for cleanliness. It is an argument that sounds persuasive until one asks: what is freedom in a society where disorder is a shared burden? As you answer that, you should not forget that a city cannot be free if it is not clean; and it cannot be clean if its citizens are free to defile it without consequence.

Public order begins in private habit. A city is not dirty by accident; it is dirtied by choice—repeated daily, normalised over time. 

The Yoruba have a proverb: “Ilé la ti ń kó ẹ̀so r’ode”—it is from the home we take adornments to outside. But we take outside more than the desirable. We export virtues and vices. The misguided one who sneaks their refuse into a neighbour’s dustin transfers both cost and stench. The man who leaves his house spotless only to empty his waste into a roadside drain has merely transferred filth, he has not removed it.

Someone once told me that nature, unlike man, keeps a faithful account. People drive miles to dump refuse on highways, pour waste into canals, and block the drainage systems meant to protect them. When the rains come as they always do, the same waste returns, flooding homes, displacing families, and spreading disease.

History offers its own lessons. Cities that endure are cities that discipline themselves. In 19th-Century London, the Great Stink forced a reluctant government to act. What followed was more than an engineering response; there was a civic awakening. Cleanliness became not just policy, but culture.

Lagos stands at a similar threshold. If a monthly exercise is what we need to intubate a gasping environment why not have it? The monthly sanitation exercise may not, in itself, be a magic wand. Two hours of sweeping may not undo thirty days of negligence. But symbols matter. Rituals matter. They remind a people of their duty and collective responsibility.

But government must do more than the monthly ritual. Many residents still do not understand waste sorting, recycling, or proper disposal. That gap must be filled by enforcement, and more importantly by education. A policy imposed without understanding breeds resistance; a policy embraced with knowledge breeds ownership.

Yet, beyond knowledge lies will. The success of this initiative will depend not only on government directives, but on citizen cooperation. Laws can compel compliance; only values can sustain it. Sustainability is to know that cleanliness is not a monthly event; it is a daily ethic.

Those who oppose the monthly exercise in the name of freedom must also reckon with responsibility. Freedom without order is chaos in slow motion. The right to move freely cannot include the right to endanger others through collective neglect. A society that refuses small disciplines invites larger crises.

Nigeria’s attempt at civic discipline has a long history. Colonial records are full of efforts at defeating filthy living. I read Robert Stock’s ‘Environmental Sanitation in Nigeria: Colonial and Contemporary’ (1988). Stock reminds us that environmental sanitation formed the fifth phase of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI), launched in Kano on July 29, 1985, by Major-General Tunde Idiagbon. To spur compliance, a one-million-naira prize was announced for the cleanest state capital. What followed was a wave of frenzied sanitary activity across the country. State governments established sanitation task forces, hired additional workers to clear refuse, and ordered the closure of offices and businesses on designated clean-up days. Mobile sanitation courts were empowered, prosecuting defaulters with uncommon urgency. For a moment, order held. Streets were swept, drains cleared, and a sense prevailed that public space mattered. But discipline imposed without deep-rooted civic culture proved difficult to sustain. When the urgency faded, old habits quietly returned.

That history now shadows Lagos. The question is not whether monthly sanitation exercises can work—they once did. The question is whether this generation can internalise what was once enforced: that cleanliness is not a government programme, but a civic ethic.

In the end, the question is not whether Lagos should have a monthly sanitation exercise. The question is whether Lagosians are ready to see themselves as custodians of their environment, not its occupants who are free to clog its air with stench.

People who say Lagos works should know that a city is more than its roads and bridges. A state or city is a reflection of the habits of its people. And when those habits promote decay, no policy, however well-intentioned, can save it.

A popular hospital in Ibadan has this inscription: We care, God cures. Caring actually cures and saves. The city we do not care for will soon decay. Lagos, and all other cities of filth, must choose between convenience and consequence; between neglect and renewal, between a freedom that dirties and a discipline that cleans.

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

Anxieties that dominated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s London trip were chiefly about his ability to go through the public events, especially, without falling, tripping, stumbling, mis-stepping, as was the case in Turkey in January. Tinubu and his minders could not have tucked the tumbles in Turkey out of their minds.

Tinubu had a troubled mind going to London. This had nothing to do with Turkey. Whatever is left of his humanity tormented his decision to make an unnecessary trip with his charge as Commander-in-Chief being challenged by terrorists who had chosen the past three weeks to unleash attacks on parts of Borno State, including Maiduguri, the capital.

Attacks were not only on villages for food, new wives or to beef up their human shields, in case they were attacked. They attacked military camps, posts from which we could initiate attacks.
Soldiers were killed. Their commanders were killed. Military wares were carted away or destroyed.

Accounts of these events have been rendered off-handedly.

The military casualty figure in one attack was quoted as more than 100 soldiers. The Commander-in-Chief said nothing. The commanders also said nothing.

No longer does the military go after its attackers. There is no anger, no matter how feeble, in the voice of the Commander-in-Chief when he discusses terrorism and banditry. Hundreds of Nigerians who lose their lives across the country no longer elicit any reaction from Tinubu whose major and minor interests coalesce on his re-election.

Tinubu is unfeeling unless where issues that could affect his re-election bid are involved. With over 100 people dead from suicide-bombings in Maiduguri, Tinubu practically step on the bodies as he headed for his date in London, his wife in tow and a plane full of supporters to welcome the President to London.

They were back on time to welcome him on his return to Lagos.

A Nigeria that is running on loans paid for the jamboree, one more pointer to Tinubu’s dedication to wasting public funds. How won’t he?

This President is running two budgets currently, 2024 and 2025. Soon he will add the 2026 budget to them.

He will spend the next few months hyping a trip that produced an “investment” of about N1 trillion that Nigeria would borrow from British banks. More loans! What else is Tinubu about?

Transactions of that size could have been assigned to the High Commission in London and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. But Tinubu must be seen as doing something.

The casual instruction that the Service Chiefs should move to Maiduguri immediately, moments before departing, and the announcement that more ammunitions have been released sound at best comic.

Parts of Nigeria have been under attacks. Casualty figures were rising. Where was the Commander-in-Chief?

All that was on the Commander-in-Chief’s mind was a meeting with King Charles. A Commander-in-Chief should be heading home if abroad and learnt his country was under attack.

Not our Tinubu. Nothing would stop that trip.

While mass burials from attacks by bandits and terrorists continue, a mass wedding involving 10 sons and daughters of the Minister of State for Defence Bello Matawalle in Abuja in February is the type of priorities Tinubu’s government and its officials promote.

Tinubu needed the trip to assure the British that he would not choose Paris completely over London.

That miserly N1 trillion “investment” is a statement on the flagging British economy and the withering influence of Charle’s kingdom. Tinubu is happy that he has France and Britain to lean on for his re-election.

The certainty from meeting the King and Prime Minister in London and guaranteed lunch dates and medicals in Paris are very important to Tinubu’s survival in power.

Both countries are glad to use Tinubu. He gladly obliges them. The British want to restart economic exploitation of Nigeria with feet firmly planted in the modernisation and management of the only two working ports that control the rev and nerve of Nigeria’s import-dependent economy.

For the French, the main interests are in the solid minerals of ravaged North-West and elsewhere they are found. France needs replacement for its former colonies of Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Chad that have become unreliable sources of solid minerals after they kicked the French out.

Tinubu believes he has kept the Americans in check with the lobbyists he hired to convince those in Washington who think there are insecurity issues in Nigeria that Tinubu loves Christians. Notably, his wife is a pastor as Donald Trump has acknowledged. Incertitude about Tinubu’s education and what he was doing in Chicago are chilling matters now.

And Tinubu is learning to serve the sensibilities of each of his benefactors well. Unbelievably, he did not stop over in Paris during this trip.

Most importantly, he did not fall. There were anxious moments though – the television shot that created the impression that Tinubu would walk a mile to get to #10 Downing Street in Westminster, London, office, and residence of the British Prime Minister was at the door to receive him – tasked the concerns.

Will the President get there, incident-free?

Tinubu did not help matters. He appeared to be counting his steps, admiring the surroundings, and perhaps rehearsing his remarks for the vaunted meeting for a trip that was majorly about photo opportunities to impress the next set of Nigerians he will send bags of rice to, with the importance of the Tinubu who meets King and Queen of England.

New bags of Tinubu rice could come branded with the pictures from England.

We should be happy for our President for pulling this visit off. We must thank King Charles, who discarded royal protocols, to tuck Tinubu’s arm into his, ensuring that no misstep fashioned against Tinubu prospered.

If you insist on thanking the King, Tinubu props say the King was extending courtesy to an elder. Which elder? Is Tinubu, 73, now older than Charles, 77?

Tinubu has consistently failed to manage the menace of bandits and terrorists. He is comfortable enough with the killing of Nigerians, some of them security agents, as long as he is President.

All that matters to Tinubu is winning the next election. Our lives are more important than the next elections. Tinubu does not think our lives matter.

Finally…

The Confederation of African Football, CAF, is committed to crash whatever it has left of African football or leave it in adequate chaos to make a zombie of it. How will CAF strip Senegal of its 2025 AFCON title based on Articles 82 and 84 of the competition’s regulations, two months after the contest?

Article 82 states that if a team leaves the ground before the regular end of the match without the referee’s permission, they are considered to have lost the game. Was it Senegal’s fault that the referee re-started the game if Senegal was in violation?

Morocco is such an unsportsmanlike nation, and it showed throughout the competition, harassing opponents, removing towels of goalkeepers and the hostility of the home fans was top-notch.

Eighteen Senegalese football fans are in prison in Morocco for 3 to 12 months sentences following clashes at the January 2026 AFCON final in Rabat. The fans were found guilty of hooliganism.

The Police and other security agencies should protect other political parties who APC has taken an interest in disrupting their activities. If everyone behaves like APC we are on a sure path to a lot of confusion, and crises.

Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

There is a particular kind of silence that follows a kidnapping. It is not the absence of sound, but the absence of certainty. Phones stay charged. Families stop sleeping. Every unknown number becomes both hope and dread. In that silence, the Nigerian citizen is reduced to a negotiable asset—waiting, not for justice, but for a price.

In the concluding part of last week’s The Sunday Stew, I had promised that today we would take a deep dive into the paradox of living under the shadow of self-inflicted disasters. In reflecting on the approach to adopt, my mind went back to the world-acclaimed scholar, Ali Mazrui.

In 1986, Mazrui — then a towering figure at the University of Jos and Binghamton — released his seminal documentary, The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Mazrui argued that the African identity was a product of three interlocking legacies: the Indigenous, the Islamic, and the Western.

Nigeria, however, appears to be shaped by a far more dangerous convergence of forces.

We are currently shadowed by what I call The Insecurity Triad—a three-headed monster of Kidnapping, Banditry, and Terrorism that threatens to dismantle the very heritage Mazrui celebrated. We begin today with kidnapping, what I have chosen to call the “Ransom Economy”.

From Global Origins to the Nigerian Evolution

Kidnapping is not a Nigerian invention. Historically, it has evolved from sporadic opportunism to structured enterprise. In the 19th-century United States, abductions were mostly local or motivated by personal vendettas. However, the 1932 abduction of Charles Lindbergh Jr. marked a global turning point, demonstrating the potential for ransom at a national scale and prompting the US Federal Kidnapping Act.

Today, the more pressing parallels lie in the “narco-states” of Latin America. In Mexico, cartels use “express kidnappings” to drain bank accounts and mass-abduct migrants to extort their families.

In Colombia, what began as a tool for political “taxation” by groups like the FARC eventually became an outsourced criminal market. Whether it is a drug lord in Michoacán or a bandit leader in the Kuyambana Forest, the logic is identical: kidnapping is the “venture capital” or liquidity that funds larger insurgencies.Politics

Nigeria’s journey followed a similar, albeit accelerated, trajectory. Prior to the year 2000, incidents were sporadic. By the early 2000s, the Niger Delta became the first laboratory for industrial-scale abductions.

It is essential to note that the genesis of this trend was rooted in grievance rather than simple greed. In those early days, the targeting of oil workers was a violent form of protest against multinational oil companies accused of systemic environmental degradation and the utter neglect of oil-bearing communities. What began as a desperate cry for resource control, however, soon mutated. The “grievance model” of Niger Delta provided the blueprint for the “profit model” we see today nationwide, as criminal networks realised that human liberty was the most liquid asset they could trade.

The Human Face of the Ransom Economy

Behind the statistics are real people, real trauma, and real negotiations. In 2021, a friend of Sundiata Post, Mrs. Elsie Iloelunachi, a businesswoman, travelled from Abuja to Onitsha to purchase goods. On her return journey, somewhere in Kogi State, her vehicle was hijacked. While a few passengers managed to escape, she was not so fortunate. She was marched into the forest and held for a few days.

According to her account, she survived partly because she could communicate in the language of her abductors. She pleaded. She negotiated. Eventually, the kidnappers sent an account number to her husband. He raised the money and transferred it.

When she later came to my office to recount her experience, the psychological toll was unmistakable. She was visibly shaken, emotionally and mentally scarred, yet she still counted herself lucky. She had returned alive, without physical injury or molestation—a “best-case outcome” in a system where survival is increasingly uncertain.

In another case, a past president of the Rotary Club of Abuja CBD travelled to Lagos on official duty. On his return journey to Abuja, his vehicle was hijacked in Ondo State. What followed was panic—not just within his family, but across the Rotary community. The club and district mobilised. Funds were raised. Networks were activated. For weeks, uncertainty loomed until he eventually regained his freedom.

There is also the growing pattern of attacks on schools and religious institutions—spaces once considered sanctuaries. One particularly harrowing case involved St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Niger State, on November 21, 2025. Gunmen abducted 315 people, including nursery pupils as young as five. Parents received intermittent, terrifying calls from the abductors, alternating between threats and negotiation. Some students escaped into the surrounding forest, while others were released in staged groups over the next month. Families, like that of 62-year-old Dauda Chekula who lost four grandchildren, endured unimaginable trauma, with no immediate government support.

Another alarming example occurred in Sokoto, where a cleric and his students were abducted during a nighttime raid. The cleric negotiated tirelessly to secure the children’s release, demonstrating the terrifying human calculus families now face in a system where trust in protection is fragile.

The Ransom Economy has moved from the lonely highway to the family dinner table. The early 2024 abduction of the Al-Kadriyar sisters in Bwari, FCT, remains a scar on the national psyche. The subsequent killing of one daughter, Nabeehah, to “accelerate” payment proved that even the seat of power in Abuja was no longer a fortress. From coordinated street-level raids in Katampe to the surgical, contract-style snatching of professionals in Port Harcourt, kidnappers have weaponised the doorstep.

The systematic targeting of the clergy represents a war on the soul of the nation. In the last year alone, at least 17 Catholic priests were abducted. Kidnappers demanded a total of ₦460 million with approximately ₦70 million verified as paid by desperate parishioners and families. The case of Fr. Mikah Suleiman in Sokoto and the heroic sacrifice of Fr. Thomas Oyode in Edo—who reportedly traded his own liberty for that of his students—illustrate that for the kidnapper, the Church is not a house of God, but a guaranteed source of crowd-funded negotiation.

These stories are not isolated. They are fragments of a larger system—one that has turned fear into currency and human beings into collateral.

Why Kidnapping is ‘Attractive’

We must ask: why is Nigeria a global outlier in this menace? The answer lies in the collapse of the legitimate economy. When a state cannot provide viable means of income, the ‘Ransom Economy’ fills the vacuum. For a youth in a marginalised rural community or an urban slum, the return on investment (ROI) of a kidnapping raid far outweighs years of manual labour.

However, we cannot ignore the role of greed. The industry has attracted “investors”—informants, logistics providers, and even rogue elements within formal structures—who see kidnapping as a high-reward, low-risk business. This combination of economic despair and predatory greed has turned a crime into a career path.

The Ransom Economy by the Numbers

To understand the financial scale of this crisis, we look to data provided by SBM Intelligence for the period of July 2024 to June 2025. During this window, the total ransom demanded by criminal networks reached a staggering ₦48 billion (approximately $31 million), reflecting a high-volume strategy. Out of this, ₦2.57 billion (roughly $1.66 million) was verified as paid—a 144% year-on-year increase in actual payments.

These funds were extracted from 4,722 victims across 997 reported incidents. Most chilling is the lethality rate: 762 deaths were recorded, meaning nearly one person died for every reported incident. This reveals a “naira-to-dollar trap”; as the naira devalues, kidnappers become more aggressive, demanding higher sums simply to maintain their purchasing power for black-market arms and logistics.

Why Nigeria?

How can a country with so much promise and capacity be reduced to a state where it cannot protect its citizens? The answer lies in our “ungoverned spaces” and a centralised policing structure that has created a dangerous intelligence gap. When the state is physically absent, the criminal becomes the de facto sovereign.

Ali Mazrui’s Triple Heritage was about the synthesis of culture to build a future.

Our Insecurity Triad is about the collision of forces that destroy it. To protect her citizens, Nigeria must re-occupy her own land.

We must:

•Decentralise Intelligence

•Close Ungoverned Spaces

•Bankrupt the Triad

Every abduction is a withdrawal from the fragile bank of national trust. If we do not act decisively, the Ransom Economy will continue to fund even more destructive forces.

Join me next week for Part II, where we examine the Rural Siege of Banditry.

Don’t miss it.

Trust it is sacred. Stay seasoned

• Max Amuchie, CEO of Sundiata Post, writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context. X: @MaxAmuchie | Email: [email protected] | Tel: +234(0)8053069436.

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

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“Minor judges have been known to abuse the contempt of court jurisdiction in an attempt to enhance their own dignity.” — David Pannick QC, Judges, 119 (1987)

Sardar Tejendrasingh lived in England but, by his own admission, was devoid of “respect for this country or its civilization or its courts.” In 1982, as plaintiff in a case for debt recovery at the Cambridge County Court, he chose to address the court sitting down. The court registrar, who took the view that this was contempt of the court, decided in August 1982 to pause proceedings in Mr. Tejendrasingh’s case until he was purged of this contempt. One year later, in September 1983, Alan Garfitt, the trial judge, informed Mr. Tejendrasingh of the court’s decision to indefinitely suspend hearing of his case unless and until he provided a written undertaking to stand while addressing the court.

Mr. Tejendrasingh appealed against this to the Court of Appeal which affirmed the decision of the trial judge. In its decision in November 1985, the Court of Appeal reasoned: “if a court orders somebody to stand when addressing it or giving evidence, that order is not different from any other order of the court. It is something which has to be obeyed.”

The nature of orders that courts can give or which suitors in court are obliged to obey in such situations has varied through the ages. In his book on The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, John Lord Campbell tells a story from the first quarter of the 17^th century of a “Catholic gentleman nearly eighty years old” who was sentenced to “be fined £1000, lose his ears, stand on the pillory at Westminster and Lancaster, and suffer perpetual imprisonment, for merely presenting a respectful petition to the King, praying for inquiry into the conduct of one of the judges of assize, who had condemned to death a neighbour for entertaining a Jesuit.”

Others have been even less lucky. In 1631, Chief Justice Richardson of the Court of Common Bench was on his way out of court after pronouncing a sentence of death upon a suspect on trial for a felony when “the prisoner found himself able to express his dissent from the sentence pronounced upon him by hurling a brickbat at the Chief Justice’s head.” For his contempt, the prisoner, was reportedly “immediately hanged in the presence of the court.”

Recent events in Nigeria have extinguished any misapprehensions that these flashes of judicial savagery may have ended with the transition from the Medieval to the early modern period. In the past week, a judge of the Federal High Court, Mohammed Umar, reopened the question as to what kind of orders a judge may be at liberty to give in seeking to uphold his or her judicial authority or dignity.

The circumstance was the trial of publisher and politician, Omoyele Sowore, who is being prosecuted by the State Security Service on the charge of having called Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a criminal. At the resumed trial on Monday, 16 March 2026, contretemps reportedly erupted between the judge and the defence counsel, Marshall Abubakar, over the scheduling of a date for the defence to argue its no-case submission at the end of the prosecution’s case. The defence apparently desired a longer adjournment than the court was willing to grant.

Ordinarily, this should not have been raucous. In the midst of the exchanges over the dates, however, the judge reportedly took exception to the inflection or tone of counsel and threatened to cite him for contempt. Almost immediately, it appears, the judge thought the better of it or lost his temper “and ordered the lawyer to step forward and kneel down as punishment for what he described as contempt of court.”

In response, Marshall Abubakar is reported to have informed the court that “kneeling before a judge was unknown to Nigerian law and could not be imposed as a lawful punishment.” At this point, other lawyers present in court, fearing the onset of a judicial meltdown, reportedly rose in collective de-escalation. They eventually managed to stay the hand of His Lordship from also asking the lawyer to raise his hands over his head, close his eyes, and expose his buttocks for licks from a judicial Sjambok.

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), through its president, Afam Osigwe, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), took a serious view of the matter. In a statement issued the following day, the NBA president cautioned that “directing a legal practitioner or indeed any person whatsoever to kneel in court is not a recognised judicial sanction under our laws and does not align with the standards of judicial conduct expected on the Bench.”

At the heart of the objection by the NBA is the guarantee of the right to human dignity in section 34 of Nigeria’s constitution, reinforced by the prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Uganda Law Society (ULS) also weighed in. Their reaction issued through its president, Isaac Ssemakadde, warned that “no judge possesses the legal power to order a legal practitioner to kneel. That directive was not discipline; it was humiliation.”

This episode raises important questions concerning both the limits of judicial power and standards of professional comportment for participants in the judicial and legal process.

For advocates of rule of law, judicial orders are to be obeyed at all times. So, should the lawyer (not) have obeyed the order to kneel down even if he could then have appealed against it subsequently?

The pivotal question here is when is an order judicial? The exercise of the power to punish for contempt of court or to preserve the authority of the judicial office is not at large. In exercising it, a judge is not precluded from the obligations to observe the basic rules of fair hearing or respect for constitutional guarantees.

In this case, the order to “kneel down” was a sentence issued without the opportunity of a hearing, formal conviction, or even a record. To be quite plain, there was nothing judicial about it. Even if the lawyer was minded to obey and then appeal later, the likelihood is that there would have been no record on the basis of which to appeal for, surely, the judge could not have written: “I hereby convict Mr. Abubakar and sentence him to kneel down.”

Whether or not the facts justified the judge in invoking the power of contempt is not in dispute at this time. For present purposes, that point is conceded. However, having done so, the court thereafter chose to sacrifice its power on the altar of abuse. In the circumstance, regrettably, Mr. Abubakar was well within his rights to be slow in complying with “kneel down”. Put differently, there was no order to obey.

It is not as if the judge was without options in the circumstance. He could have referred the lawyer to the Legal Practitioner’s Disciplinary Committee or, indeed, tried and convicted him for contempt before deciding what sentence to impose.

Even better he may be been better served if he had read Brian McKenna’s famous lecture at the University of Durham in February 1969.

In the lecture, McKenna, a judge, tells the story of the conclusion of one of his earliest trials as a judge following which “a temperamental Irish lady flung her handbag in my direction after I had sentenced her delinquent brother to a period of training.” In response, he writes, “I gave her the benefit of doubt; I assumed that her target was the Clerk of the Court sitting beneath the throne, no myself.”

Mr. Justice Kneel Down may one day discover virtue in judicial forbearance.

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.