LAURETTA ONOCHIE

Nigeria today feels like a nation trapped in a hospital ward with a patient who will not take prescribed drugs. The symptoms are obvious. The pain is visible. The diagnosis has been repeatedly confirmed by experts, institutions, and the lived experiences of ordinary citizens. Yet, the government under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu behaves like a patient in denial—insisting it is healthy while the body politic weakens by the day. According to the World Bank, tens of millions of Nigerians have been pushed into poverty in less than two years of this administration. That is not opposition rhetoric; it is a cold, empirical assessment of a country where hunger has become normal, survival has become a daily struggle, and hope is evaporating faster than household income. If current policies persist, even more Nigerians are projected to sink below the poverty line by 2027. A government confronted with such grim statistics should pause, reflect, and urgently change course. Instead, this one has ch...

Is Bello Turji part of a design to weaken the North, or merely a convenient footnote in a blueprint where insecurity doubles as a convininent excuse for resource capture? Welcome to Sarcastic Sunday. This week, with Mohammed Bello Doka, we examine Nigeria’s political gymnastics sarcastically, because approaching them soberly is a health hazard. Here, we laugh so we don’t suffocate. We mock so we don’t scream. We ask questions because silence, in this country, has become a security risk. We are constantly reminded—loudly, lovingly, and with evangelical zeal—that President Bola Tinubu is the architect of modern Nigeria. Architects, we are told, design order. They erect systems. They secure foundations. They enforce structural integrity. Which raises an awkward, impolite, but necessary question: since when do architects invite demolition crews to stakeholder meetings? Because somewhere between the speeches and the slogans, Bello Turji emerged not as an aberration, but as a recurring featu...

Gilbert Chagoury  On a hot afternoon in July 2004, Nigerian police officers waited beside a runway in the far northeastern corner of the country. The air shimmered above the tarmac. Somewhere beyond the horizon, a private jet was descending. The man inside it had not been home in years. His name had been spoken in whispers across courtrooms in Europe, inside Swiss banks, in the offices of investigators who believed that if they ever pulled this thread hard enough, an entire decade of theft would unravel. The jet touched down. Its wheels kissed Nigerian soil. Then, almost immediately, it lifted again. No handcuffs or need for explanations. Someone had tipped him off. Gilbert Chagoury disappeared into the sky. That image matters because it tells you everything about how power works in Nigeria. Power here does not work as an institution, or even as a constitution, but as a habit. Power here remembers its friends. Gilbert Chagoury was born in Lagos in 1946 to Lebanese immigrant parents...

Is Kaduna politics really settled—or is it merely quiet? If the El-Rufai–Ashiru alignment is a mirage, why the hurried denials? If power is secure, why the nervous need to mock what “does not exist”? And if yesterday’s kingmaker is truly finished, why does his shadow still decide tomorrow’s conversations? These are not academic questions. They cut to the bone of Kaduna’s unfinished 2023 story—and to the unease now visible in the reactions of Governor Uba Sani and his loudest defender, Shehu Sani. Power that feels safe does not shout this much. THE 2023 ELECTION KADUNA WANTS TO FORGET  The official story says 2023 is over. The electoral record says otherwise. In that election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) swept all three senatorial seats in Kaduna State. North, Central, South—every Senate seat went PDP. That is not a fluke. It is not an accident. It is evidence of statewide reach, voter mood, and organisational muscle. Yet, in the same cycle, the governorship stayed with the A...

Shettima and Tinubu   How does a sitting Vice-President become invisible in his own party? Who keeps removing his image from official programmes—and why does nobody correct it? At what point does silence become policy, omission become intention, and coincidence become design? And if power has already moved on, why does the Vice-President remain, smiling beside a door that is quietly being shut? These are not idle questions. They go to the heart of power, democracy, and institutional dignity in Nigeria today. What began as murmurs has hardened into a pattern: repeated APC programmes—national, zonal, and stakeholder meetings—centred on President Bola Tinubu increasingly carry no image of the Vice-President. Not once. Not twice. Repeatedly. In different regions. Over time. Without correction. Without apology. Without explanation. In Nigerian politics, visuals are not decorations. They are declarations. Posters, banners, backdrops, and stage designs are deliberate acts of messagin...

Lagos, Home Of Northern Gold  If the South, especially Lagos, has endlessly mocked the North as a parasite — living off oil and Lagos taxes — what does it mean now that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government wants Northern gold to be refined in Lagos? Is the North only a parasite until its resources become useful? On January 18, 2026, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) publicly blasted what it called the siting of a “National Gold Refinery” in Lagos, accusing the Federal Government of violating Nigeria’s constitutional principles of equity and federal balance. NEF pointed out that Nigeria’s commercially viable gold deposits are overwhelmingly in the North, yet value addition — the refinery — was suddenly in Lagos.  The government hastily responded that the refinery is not a federal project but a private initiative of a company called Kian Smith. Officials described NEF’s claim as false and misleading. But the harsh truth is that this back-and-forth exposes a deeper, structural ...