"Bola, you are like a dull student who copied his classmate's answer, you have done it so blindly that the classmate's name at the top of his exam paper and then demanded marks for original thinking.
You copied my production subsidy proposal, nothing wrong about that, you Stripped away the part that makes it work and handed Nigerians a 30-day discount.
Where is the rest of the answer Bola?
You see why it is good to go to school."
- H.E. Atiku Abubakar GCON
I welcome the Court of Appeal's decision to stay the execution of the Federal High Court judgment seeking the deregistration of our great party, the ADC, and four other political parties. It is particularly significant that INEC itself initiated the application for the stay.
The disturbing spectacle of judicial contradictions and politically charged rulings playing out in our courts has placed the judiciary under intense public scrutiny. As ADC National Chairman, Sen. David Mark, rightly observed, the judiciary itself is now on trial.
Any attempt to undermine Nigeria's hard-won democracy through judicial manipulation is a grave danger to the Republic. If our democracy suffers further injury, history will demand accountability from those entrusted with dispensing justice. The judiciary still has an opportunity to redeem itself by standing firmly on the side of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Nigerian people. -AA
After gulping $1.5bn, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has now admitted that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is a waste of scarce resources. This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeriaโs refineries should be privatised.
It is instructive that the Tinubu administration has finally come to terms with an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is economically indefensible. Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest.
For years, I advanced this patriotic position and was vilified and accused of plotting to sell public assets to โfriends.โ
Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric. Decades of so-called turnaround maintenance have swallowed billions of dollars with nothing to show for it, exposing deep deficits in capacity, technical know-how, and financial discipline.
The latest push to โreviveโ these refineries was driven by political pressure, not economic sense. Politics must never substitute for sound, transformative policy.
Accordingly, any proposed refinery deal, including with foreign partners, should be discontinued, as it merely repeats failed models.
Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries pre-rehabilitation to avoid ballooning debt and the steady depreciation of what have effectively become liabilities. -AA
Do you agree with me that opposition leaders Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi should lead a protest against Tinubu, Akpabio, and Abbas over their opposition to the electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Bill?