Nigeria Cannot Afford Another Tinubu: The Case for Presidential Candidate Screening Before 2027
A man accused of drug trafficking, with $460 million forfeited to the FBI, sits in Aso Rock. Nigerians built the first electrically lit city in Africa in 1898. Today they sweat in darkness. Something is catastrophically wrong — and it must be fixed before January 2027.
Nigeria is a nation of extraordinary people governed, with depressing frequency, by extraordinarily unworthy men. I have spent my life watching this paradox deepen. Nigerians are among the most educated, most travelled, most entrepreneurially gifted people on this planet. We produce world-class lawyers, surgeons, engineers, financiers, and statesmen. And yet, election cycle after election cycle, we find ourselves ruled by men whose records would disqualify them from managing a corner shop in any serious democracy on earth.
The time has come to say plainly what many know but few dare to publish: if Nigeria is to survive as a democracy, the National Assembly must enact legislation that screens presidential candidates against documented criminal records, forfeiture proceedings, and findings of financial misconduct before they are permitted to appear on any ballot. What we have permitted to happen in 2023 must never be permitted to happen again.
I am not speaking in abstractions. I am speaking about a man who, by the documented record of the United States federal government, forfeited $460 million to the FBI — a figure so staggering it constitutes, by itself, one of the largest drug trafficking-related civil forfeitures in American history. He has never been convicted. I note that carefully. But in any functioning democracy with basic institutional hygiene, that record alone — that scale of forfeiture, those DEA files, that IRS affidavit, that federal court order compelling disclosure — would have ended a political career before it began. In Nigeria, it was apparently no obstacle to purchasing the presidency.
And make no mistake: it was purchased. The men and women who know how it was purchased know who they are. The governors who crossed the floor know what they were paid. The electoral officials who certified results know what they certified. The judiciary that dismissed petition after petition knows what it dismissed. A democratic system survives on the integrity of its institutions. When those institutions are penetrated by money — corrupted wholesale — the system becomes a performance, a theatre in which the costumes are democratic but the script is pure autocracy.
I am a senior citizen. I have lived long enough to have been beaten by the cane of a father whose standards were absolute — six of the best for a poor school report, six of the best for disrespect, six of the best for conduct unbecoming a man of his name. Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC held Nigeria’s first office of Solicitor-General, served as the first African Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, and raised his sons to understand that a man is only as good as his record. I studied at Eton. I studied at Wharton. I walked through England when skin-headed thugs spat at my feet and called me names I will not repeat here. I have seen worse than personal indignity. I have seen war. And I am telling you now, as a man who has seen the world and returned to fight for his people: what is happening in Nigeria today is an organised crime against an entire nation.
Where is the money from the removal of the fuel subsidy? The justification offered to Nigerians — to the mothers paying six times the previous price for cooking gas, to the drivers paying seven times the previous price for petrol — was that the subsidy was a drain, that its removal would free up billions for investment, for infrastructure, for the people. Where are those billions? Nigeria’s national debt has continued to climb. Borrowing has accelerated. The 2025 budget implementation period has been extended from March to June 2026 , a quiet administrative acknowledgment that the money was not disbursed as planned. Ministers sit in their offices unable to implement programmes. Salaries go unpaid in federal institutions. Meanwhile in Aso Rock, the lights never go out. A billion-dollar solar installation guarantees that the man who removed your electricity subsidy never experiences the darkness he has sentenced you to.
Lagos received electric light in 1898 — among the first cities on the African continent to be electrified. That is not mythology. That is historical fact. Nigeria’s potential is not a recent discovery. It is a century-old inheritance that has been squandered, generation by generation, by men who saw public office not as a trust but as a personal extraction machine.
To the governors who defected to the APC: keep whatever you were paid. I ask you only to do one thing with it — leave. That ship is the Titanic. It is sailing full speed toward an iceberg and the captain has locked the lifeboats. When it goes down — and it will go down — it will take everyone aboard with it. Save yourselves while you still can. History will not be kind to the men who helped a criminal entrench himself, and history is the only court whose verdicts are permanent.
To the Chairman of INEC: read your history books. Not the triumphant chapters — the cautionary ones. Read what becomes of the men who certified fraudulent mandates for dictators. Read what their names mean today. You do not want your name to mean what theirs mean. The opposition has already noted that budgeting ₦135 billion for post-election litigation signals that even the government expects the 2027 results to be widely contested.  That is not the profile of a free and fair election in preparation. That is the budget of a theft in advance.
To the judiciary: you became lawyers because something in you believed in justice. I ask you to find that belief again. The great lawyers who shaped this profession — men like my late friend Chief Stephen Steady Arthur-Worrey QC, men like my father — did not build their legacies by selling their signatures. Stop taking money from powerful men. Stop renting your robes. The devil always collects.
To the members of the security services — the DSS officers, the soldiers, the police — every student you detain without charge is someone’s child. Every activist you imprison is someone’s parent. Every union man, every labourer, every ordinary Nigerian you terrorise in the name of a criminal’s political survival is a weight on your conscience that will not lift. The ancestors are watching. The hand of fate is patient. But it is not forgetful.
Nigeria deserves a president who can stand before the world — before the FBI, before the DEA, before the British courts, before the Swiss financial regulators — and say: I have nothing to hide. My record is clean. My money is clean. My hands are clean.
The next general election is scheduled for January 16, 2027.  We have time — not much, but enough — to do this right. Enough time to demand candidate integrity legislation from the National Assembly. Enough time to build the coalition of conscience that 2027 requires. Enough time to give Nigeria the leader it has always deserved but has never been allowed to have.
I will not stop writing until that day comes. My father’s belt taught me that standards matter. His life taught me that Nigeria matters. Both lessons still hold.
Kio Amachree | Stockholm, Sweden | President, Worldview International
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#KioAmachree #WorldviewInternational #TheKioSolution #NigeriaDecides2027 #GodfreyAmachree #EndCorruptionNG #ScreenOurCandidates #NigeriaDeservesBetter #Tinubu2027 #INECAccountability #JudiciaryReform #DSSAbuses #NigerianDiaspora #SaharaReporters #VanguardNigeria
Allow Abians to celebrate their wins. Don’t try to jinx it for them. I can excuse your ignorance.
If you had known the desperate situation in that part of the country before now, you would have had no choice but to rejoice with them.
Abia State was called the former ‘Kerosine State.’ It was called the former ‘Abia Rwanda.’ They were crucified on the timeline with photos & videos best described as apocalyptic.
That part of the country was nothing less than grotesque, abandoned; you almost felt it was invaded by a type of scorched-earth policy.
Twitter was inundated with videos of horrible roads & polluted swamps. Aba was a no-go area, almost forbidden. You must be out of your mind to pay them a visit. Unless you were ready to visit the mechanic shop for a serious parts replacement, you were told to avoid Aba.
For Abians, their options were limited. They went about their daily activities swimming in polluted swamps. Schools, hospitals, & roads were an eyesore. They were always reminded to shut up or lower their voices on the internet.
It was commanding almost, “the Silence of the Lamb.” Like sheep, Abians obeyed! Eyimba reduced themselves so that others could thrive & flex their muscles on the internet.
Not to be seen, never to be heard; Abians remained defeated but hopeful. It was 25 years of backwardness, but also of trepidation & indignation. When a people resign themselves to fate, they become survivalists. Abians were resignation reduced to its basic essence.
The combined forces of OUK, T.A Orji, & Okezie Ikpeazu unleashed the worst form of physical & psychological trauma. But also woes & shame. They were monstrosity, the boogeymen.
They spared no expense in administering the potions. People paid attention & looked for solutions in serendipity. Alex Otti was entirely fortuitous. It was the defiance of one woman, she stood between the people of Eyimba & fate.
She came under threat, Professor Nnenna Oti was intimidated by powerful forces to subvert the will of the people. But ‘defiance’ stood her ground & courageously declared Alex Otti as the rightful winner of Abia governorship poll.
She was tsunami, nature’s subterranean power
Of course Ogun is leading in industrialization, but not roads. The Agbara Industrial Complex is synonymous with the Trans-Amadi Industrial Complex in my state. Ogun will continue to benefit from its proximity to Lagos state.
It is more industrialized, but Abia has better infrastructure. Two truth can coexist. A healthy competition among states can spur growth.
You don’t have to reduce everything to tribe. Not everything should lead to a type of bad blood. Keep the conversations healthy & coming. For now, Alex Otti is the Best Governor in Nigeria. Seyi Makinde was the Best at one point. We will celebrate another state someday.
That’s the only way to reward excellence at the sub-national. For now, Otti leads, others follow.
@RealQueenBee__@SegunShowunmi@mehdirhasan What I found appalling in that interview was the way @BwalaDaniel kept on lying and denying to statements he made years ago even, when faced with facts & dates. It only portrayed Nigerians & the government as lacking in honor & integrity. That is really a big shame!