Abiodun Oladipo

Governance & Inclusive Institutions Analyst. I am passionate about governance reforms. |Federalist

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

"The Awolowo-led elite approach power as an instrument to reduce, if not end, inequality, rather than as an instrument used by the elite to maintain inequality. This is why the motto of the Action Group was 'Freedom for all, life more abundant'."--Prof. Wale Adebanwi

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

@AyoBankole You really don't know Obj. Whatever he does, it's for self-interest. His daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo, is contesting for governorship under APC. His hide ans seek relationship with Atiku and El-Rufai should tell you the kind of person Obj is.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

This is a masterpiece! But the question is, can the situation be redeemed or we should negotiate a new system.

[Gimba Kakanda @gimbakakanda]

Why Couldn’t Nigeria Build What Iran Built Under Sanctions?

Aside from the obvious fact that Iran is not just an old country but one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisational states, with a deep cultural memory and a durable sense of historical self, the real difference may be simpler: when pressure comes, Iran can still fall back on an idea of itself as a nation, while Nigeria too often falls back on its fragments. Iran itself is ethnically diverse, but it has preserved a rich political and cultural continuity stretching back to the Achaemenian period, and modern sanctions against it have been layered on for decades, from the post-1979 rupture with the United States to the far tighter multilateral restrictions of the nuclear era.

Nigeria, by contrast, has still not fully agreed to be a nation in the emotional sense. What we have often done instead is elevate a hierarchy of competing loyalties: place of origin, ethnic group, faith, and only then the republic. We magnify these attachments when convenient and weaponise them when useful. Even the language of national belonging is frequently conditional, activated less by shared civic purpose than by the proximity of one’s own section of the country to power.

A few years ago, I was in London with friends from different Nigerian ethnic backgrounds when the subject of patriotism came up. A British friend asked what Nigeria meant to us, and the answers around the table were tellingly different. I told him then that loyalty to the Nigerian state is, for many people, rarely a first instinct. For many, it comes after loyalty to community, religion, or ethnicity. That may sound harsh, but it is not wholly detached from what survey evidence has found: Nigerians often express tolerance for diversity and many say there is more that unites them than divides them, yet experiences of ethnic discrimination weaken national belonging, and groups that feel excluded from central power are more likely to prioritise ethnic identity over national identity.

True to that sentiment, the most vocal patriot at that table that day happened to share an ethnic, religious, and regional affinity with the president of the day. So we teased him that his nationalism was animated by the feeling that the Nigerian state had become legible to him through the man in charge. He was patriotic, yes, but in the way many of us are patriotic: when the centre feels familiar, when power sounds like our language, prays like us, or comes from our own corner of the map.

We singled out another friend at the table as almost constitutionally incapable of that kind of patriotism, not because he was deficient in civic sense, but because he came from a bloc whose relationship with the Nigerian centre had long been defined by frustration, ambition, and failed bids for national power. For such a person, national identity can feel less like a common inheritance than a waiting room for other people’s victories. That, too, is part of our problem: too many of us experience Nigeria not as a shared home, but as an arena in which our “public” must capture the state before the state becomes ours.

That is why sanctions do not produce the same political psychology everywhere. In countries with a strong civic core, external pressure can trigger a rally-round-the-flag effect, however temporary. This is because the people recognise the flag as theirs. In a country where national identity is thin, pressure does not necessarily produce cohesion; it can intensify competition among internal factions, each of them calculating survival and advantage through narrower loyalties.

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[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

The issue with this back & forth is because most government polices don't usually come with M&E framework to measure performance. We don't have the result data for the large scale intervention that was carried out under the last govt as a part of their social investment program.

[Souljah @jeffphilips1]

This is an elite mindset, Natasha. 100k can do so many poor people selling stuff in the market a lot of good.

When they say Indians have lesser people in poverty than Nigeria, it's not because they have a large number of persons that are wealthy, it's because they have very large number of persons in micro schemes that are being empowered in this manner just to make sure these persons in the bottom rung of the ladder do not collapse totally.

Truth is, this category is actually in hundreds of millions over there.

You'll be shocked what these category of persons can turnover from 100k in a month and I can tell you that if every politician like Akin is doing this, Nigeria will leave the extreme poverty zone in no distant time.

However, I'm proud of how mature, very sensitive and sensible you've become over time.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

It's so bad for the UN that no major news media has reported anything from them in respect of the war. Where is the voice of Antonio Gutteres in this pandemonium the world has been thrown into?

[Olufemi AWOYEMI @OlufemiAwoyemi]

The geopolitical intelligence takeaway from this entire episode is that the non-retaliation demanded by Trump in this X post https://t.co/gfSxDJ6PpE unlocked more fully than any individual answer can, the synthesised geopolitical context that rationalises the conclusion that the world has changed forever.

In our analysis @proshare, we conclude that we are not observing a temporary disruption to a functioning international order that will self-correct when this conflict concludes (if and when it does). We are observing a structural demonstration that the international order, as constituted, cannot self-correct when its principal enforcer is the aggressor. The implications compound over time. Every state that observes this conflict and draws the lesson that sovereign security requires either nuclear capability or great-power patronage will behave differently in the next decade.

Every state that observes the ineffectiveness of the UN, the ICC, the ICJ, and multilateral condemnation will invest less in those institutions and more in unilateral capacity.

Nigeria's foreign policy, regional security partnerships, defence investment decisions, and capital market exposure to geopolitical risk all need to be calibrated against an international environment that is structurally more dangerous and institutionally less reliable than the one in which Nigeria's current strategic frameworks were developed.

That is not a commentary on the rights and wrongs of the war in Iran. It is the most important directional intelligence signal that this conflict has produced for African decision-makers.

It is a real mess.

The particular quality of this mess is that it was not accidental. It is the predictable terminal expression of a set of structural contradictions that were present in the international system from its founding but were obscured for decades by American economic dominance, the discipline of Cold War bipolarity, and the genuine, if uneven, distribution of public goods that the US-led order provided to enough states to sustain consent.

What has changed is not that the United States has become more aggressive. American foreign policy has always contained the capacity for this. What has changed is that the legitimising architecture has been progressively stripped away. The Iraq War in 2003 was the first major demonstration that the UN authorisation requirement was optional when Washington decided the stakes were high enough. Gaza from 2023 onward was the demonstration that even a plausible genocide finding from the International Court of Justice produces no enforcement consequence when the United States shields the perpetrator. The Iran operation in 2026 is the logical conclusion of that sequence. Each episode removed one more layer of restraint and demonstrated that the consequences of removal were bearable.

The cumulative lesson absorbed by every government watching this sequence is not that international law does not matter. It is that international law matters precisely to the degree that the state invoking it has the power to enforce it against you. For states without that power, law is a vocabulary for condemnation, not a mechanism for protection.

For Nigeria and for Africa more broadly, that lesson lands in a specific and uncomfortable place. The continent spent the post-independence decades building its foreign policy around the institutions and norms of an international order that is now demonstrably failing its own stated tests. The African Union's founding commitment to non-interference and sovereign equality, ECOWAS's security architecture, and Nigeria's own historically principled foreign policy positioning on non-alignment and multilateralism were all calibrated to an international environment that no longer fully exists. Cue the AES.

The strategic implication is not that Nigeria should abandon multilateralism or adopt an aggressive unilateral posture. It is that the country's decision-makers need to think far more seriously than they currently do about building the kind of regional institutional capacity, economic sovereignty, and defence architecture that does not depend on the functioning of a global order that has just demonstrated it cannot function when it is most needed.

That is a generation's worth of strategic work. And the window for beginning it, while the lesson is still vivid and before the next crisis makes it urgent rather than important, is exactly now.📌

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

@samuel_6369 @Anlugbua_Ibadan Because they length how to be ruthless from their masters while the children may have been refined based on their education and exposure to global good practices.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

How does this even make sense to you guys? Africa! My Africa!!

[CAF Media @CAF_Media]

The CAF Appeal Board decided that in application of Article 84 of the Regulations of the CAF Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), the Senegal National Team is declared to have forfeited the Final Match of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) Morocco 2025 (“the Match”), with the result of the Match being recorded as 3–0 in favour of the Fédération Royale Marocaine de Football (FRMF).
https://t.co/QKDI0FCKug

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

@AyoBankole https://t.co/KMM4YEOXbf

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

The vision of our organisation @iEngage4, is to mobilise & develop Nigerian citizens' capacity to effectively engage their government without waiting on 'messiahs' to champion their cause. But from experience, it's a difficult task due to our default setting of seeking messiah.

[Adedayo Agarau @adedayoagarau]

Would like to read a study on the Nigerian messianic complex: the need to crown a new messiah every three market days.

VDM, Rita, now Ella.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

😂😂😂

[Y.O. @yojora]

I saw someone accuse the commissioner of trying to toast her cos he offered to ride with her, abeg make una dey pretend to think sometimes.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

@Anlugbua_Ibadan 😂😂😂

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

You can also read the History of Yoruba People by Prof. Banji Akintoye. He debunked some of the misrepresentation by Samuel Johnson.

[Àrẹ̀wà AKÍNKANJÚ @queenee02]

This is pathetic

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

There is nothing in life that will make me speak against anybody making demand on their government even if the administration is headed by my father. We shouldn't be constraining citizens' right to demand services from their government in the name of supporting an administration.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

👌👌👌

[Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority LAMATA @Lamataonline]

LAMATA Responds to Trending Video; Reaffirms Commitment to Fleet Expansion
#LAMATA #KeepingLagosmoving #lasg

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

Please what is wrong with Sowore's tweet? Sincere question.

[ANLUGBUA @Anlugbua_Ibadan]

Egbon, you stand for absolutely nothing and you are just as dangerous as any other terrorist.

You in fact seem to benefit from the dysfunction. After all, of what relevance would you be in a sane society.

Like I said, you stand for absolutely nothing. Just radicalism and noise.

Shame!!!

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

Nigerian government prioritise revenue generation over the welfare of citizens. This fact is all written over the news article. The revenue target must be met notwithstanding how it affects the welfare of the citizens.

[TheCable @thecableng]

Fuel price hike: We incur cost from 47 government agencies, says Dangote Refinery

David Bird, managing director (MD) of the Dangote Refinery, says the refinery incurs costs from 47 government agencies, adding some form of fees to the final pump price of petrol in the country. 

Speaking during the a press conference in Lagos on Monday, Bird said the Federal Government of Nigeria still treats the refinery as the customer of last resort, suggesting that the best crude oil grades are sold to interantional buyers.
https://t.co/KVq3WgSw1x

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

It's sad to note that this kind of person is being nominated to the executive council of a state like river. Indeed, the worst of us lording over the best of us! 😑

[TheCable @thecableng]

TRENDING VIDEO: 'I'm a politician, we don't have work' — commissioner-nominee cites reason for not paying tax during screening at Rivers assembly

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

Pray that this kind of person doesn't advise your government. You're all done for! 😂

[Foundational Nupe Lawyer @egi_nupe]

My son is in primary 2 and his school fees in a year is over 2million naira. People want quality education but don’t want to pay the commensurate value for it.

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

Basic education should be free and qualitative because it will help a country's literacy rate which is very important for building an orderly society but university education can be privatized.

[Foundational Nupe Lawyer @egi_nupe]

Them: how do you expect quality education when teachers are poorly paid.

Me: I agree. Teachers can’t give quality education if they are paid poorly.

Me: if you want teachers to be paid well and to get quality education, you have to pay good money for school fees, except government subsidises it.

Them: I don’t agree. You can get good and quality education without paying high fees.

Some of you walk around out confused thinkings

[Abiodun Oladipo @dipoabs]

Yes, you can be excused if you change your ideological disposition but if your talking point was the character of your opponent, your integrity will be questioned if you change camp.