Steven Riddle

[Mike Tyson @MikeTyson]

⚽️

[TobyWrites @tobyasky]

Did you see how the Argentines exited the pitch at half time.

They assembled at the middle, once Messi joined, they walked behind their leader.

Mad aura

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨 OFFICIAL: Lionel Messi, TOP SCORER EVER in World Cup history joint with Miro Klose. 🎞️⭐️

16 goals at the World Cup. 💥🇦🇷

In one night, on 6th World Cup debut game at 38, Messi surpasses Mbappé (14), Müller (14) and Ronaldo Nazario (15).

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨🇦🇷 LEO MESSI HAT-TRICK ON OPENING 6TH WORLD CUP GAME.

[Man of Letters. @Letter_to_Jack]

Something powerful must have been invoked on this day.

Tell your Yoruba friend to interpret the lyrics to you.

[The Grid Post @TheGridPost]

IMPROVEMENT IN THE POWER SECTOR IS FELT, NOT TOLD.

Maybe, just maybe…

Nigeria’s electricity problem is no longer simply about “more generation.”

Yes, there are genuine ongoing projects: OB3, AKK, ELPS expansion, transmission substations, SIEMENS UPGRADES, STATE ELECTRICITY MARKETS etc. Nobody paying attention can honestly say nothing is happening.

But we also need to stop treating “ongoing” like an achievement.

In Nigeria, some projects have been “95% complete” since the time of Adam.

A power project cannot be “almost ready” for 7–10 years.

Every major project should have a clear completion date, public milestones and accountability if timelines fail.

A few uncomfortable truths:

1. The privatisation may need revision.
The DisCos likely need a mandatory recapitalisation exercise: something similar to what Soludo’s CBN did with banks. Electricity is too important for operators who cannot sufficiently invest in infrastructure, metering and network upgrades.

2. Regulation has to become enforcement.
NERC and state regulators cannot continue operating mainly through statements and guidelines yet when a citizens reports an issue; it dies off somewhere,somewhere without resolution. Compliance should be proactive, measurable and enforced.

3. We should judge the sector by outcomes, not announcements.

Since 2023, the messaging has largely been the same: improve electricity supply, stabilise the grid and increase delivered power.

Yet reality has been mixed.

2023: Better electricity supply was promised. Some may argue that they are currently worst off in terms of supply experience.

2024: Major focus shifted to grid stability and transmission improvements. Yet grid disturbances still happened repeatedly.

2025: Nigeria recorded generation highs close to 6,000 MW: genuine progress that deserves acknowledgment. But sustained supply still remains far below meagre 5,000 MW.

Now the official ambition is 8,000 MW by 2027.

Possible? Yes.

Achievable? Also yes.

But Nigerians have heard enough projections since NEPA era.

The hard questions remain:

What project will be completed? By when? What exact MW will it add? And how do Nigerians measure success beyond press statements?

Else, propaganda runs amok.

[𝐇𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐚, 𝐏𝐡.𝐃. @Realoilsheikh]

Kidnappers entered Lagos state to kidnap Lagosians, Police Kllled 4 out of them, all of them are from the southeast.

Nigerians are Quiet, Bloggers are Quiet, Southern nfluencers are quiet. If the headline had been: "4 Fulani kidnappers Kllled in Lagos", would there be this silence?

[Ọmọ Akin @GuyMr10]

When it’s time to play ethnic politics, they’ll remember Olamide is APC but forget Flavour and KCEE also performed at APC rallies and Presidential conventions. Hypocrites !

[Duke of Africa @Allezamani]

Repost without saying anything.

[Ọmọ Akin @GuyMr10]

No human deserves this 🇳🇬💔

[News Central TV @NewsCentralTV]

"Ghanaians are gone now, 300 of them. How many 300 jobs were created after the Ghanaians left."

Julius Malema says blaming migrants for job losses deepens colonial divisions and that Ghana’s response risks blaming entire societies for the actions of a few people.

[FRESH PRINCE @BlaqBonez]

CHANELOUTNOW https://t.co/F7Ue3uSzqs

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That mound of earth holds 500,000 bodies because there was no one left alive to bury them separately.

Viktor Putin died of diphtheria in the winter of 1942. He was two years old. His mother had placed him in a children's shelter hoping it would save his life. The shelters were supposed to protect kids from the bombing. Diphtheria killed him instead. There was no medicine. There were barely any calories. By that winter, Leningrad residents were rationed 125 grams of bread per day. A single slice.

His mother Maria collapsed near a pile of corpses shortly after. Workers began dragging her body toward the mass graves. She woke up on the stretcher. Putin's father Vladimir was at the front, hit by a German grenade, crawling back to Soviet lines with shrapnel in his legs. Five of his six brothers were already dead.

872 days. That's how long the siege lasted. 3 million people lived in Leningrad when it started. 700,000 were alive when it ended, and 300,000 of those were soldiers who came from elsewhere. The city lost roughly 80% of its original civilian population. The death toll exceeded Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Putin was born in 1952, eight years after the siege lifted. He never met Viktor. He has said publicly, "I don't even know where my brother is buried." He's standing at Piskarevskoye Cemetery, the largest mass grave from the Second World War. The grave doesn't have Viktor's name on it. None of them do.

He visits every January 27th. He has done this for over two decades. The flowers go on a mound of earth covering thousands of unnamed dead, and somewhere in that ground is a two-year-old boy who shares his last name.

[Steven Riddle @StevenR11843]

@MsOnyin @edomalo Hope they didn’t reject her visa after all this delay

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

https://t.co/VpvgRfNoKk

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

My dear @FranceInNigeria held my passport for 8 weeks. Denied me travel to other countries for so long. But they gave me visa for 6 weeks. The tweet below is my appreciation for their benevolence.

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

If citizens of the Global North depended on visas to travel the world the way we do in the South, visa processing would have evolved decades ago.

Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs must lead this charge.

Embassies still operating on outdated passport submission requirements should be put on notice. The ask is not unreasonable. Best practice already exists.

But that demand carries no credibility while Nigeria's own missions abroad operate by the same standards. Reform must be reciprocal.

What is needed is simple: a clear timeline for compliance, applied outward to those processing Nigerian applicants, and inward to how Nigerian missions process everyone else. We need a timeline on this, for us and for those who processes ours.

cc
@NigeriaMFA
@BTOofficial
@Ojukwu_Bianca
@France24
@AbikeDabiri
@francediplo_EN
@GermanyInAfrica
@EmmanuelMacron
@officialABAT https://t.co/GwRojYzTY8

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

This is an opportunity for @Ojukwu_Bianca and @NigeriaMFA to start a necessary conversation with these foreign missions. The ask is not complicated. @UKinNigeria is already leading on this; the standard exists and it works.

I wish this also fell under @BTOofficial and the Ministry of Interior. Because they never miss opportunities like this. Fingers crossed on immediate actions.

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you @FranceInNigeria, you are far too kind.

J'aurais écrit ceci en français, mais mon français n'est pas assez fort pour ce que je ressens à ce sujet. S'il vous plait. Merci.

My passport has been returned by @FranceInNigeria. Eight (8) weeks they held it. In their characteristic generosity toward Africans, they have issued me a visa for six (6) weeks.

Let me be clear about what this means in context. This is the shortest Schengen visa I have ever received from the French Embassy. My first, over a decade ago, was six months. The one before this lasted a year. The one before that, a year. There is a four-year Schengen visa somewhere in my records. On the very passport now graced with this extraordinary six-week stamp sit multiple-year visas from the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Canada.

Six weeks. For eight weeks of custody. The mathematics of French generosity toward Africa is its own genre. Thank you @EmmanuelMacron.

I know people who got their passports back after my first tweet on this matter. One had hers held for five weeks (5). It came back without a visa. No stamp. Just a passport returned having contributed nothing to her life but five weeks of immobility. Thankfully, they did not minute on it; a small mercy in an otherwise graceless process. Graceful, I meant to write.

This is not new territory for me. My very first engagement with the French Embassy over a decade ago ended in a visa rejection that came with written text stamped directly onto my passport. I wrote them a four-page letter demanding they never deface a Nigerian passport that way again; mine or anyone else's. I want to acknowledge that they have honoured that. Some things, at least, can be changed by speaking clearly.

Some bad faith readers will conclude this six-week visa is punishment for calling them out publicly. I reject that interpretation entirely. I prefer to see it as consistent with France's broader approach to the continent — an approach the France-Africa Summit in Nairobi will no doubt reaffirm with great warmth, generous speeches, and many photographs.

A pattern, not an anomaly.

I will be writing a full article next week to express my appreciation to @FranceInAfrica in the spirit this moment deserves.

I write this ready to bear whatever consequences follow. But I will write. After all, it's a love letter. Merci beaucoup.

cc
@NigeriaMFA
@BTOofficial
@Ojukwu_Bianca
@France24
@abikedabiri
@francediplo_EN
@GermanyInAfrica
@officialABAT
@WilliamsRuto
@CNNAfrica
@BBC
@FRANCE24
@ARISEtv
@DW_GMF
@dwnews

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

The reason why I can challenge any embassy and foreign mission is because I don’t collect any grants from any country. And there is no country in the world I must visit before I die.

All I ask for, all I have ever asked for since my very first letter to an ambassador in 2015, is respect for the Nigerian and the Nigerian passport.

I have never asked to be given any access or privileges here or in their country. I don’t care for privileges. Just respect, for my people.