THE December 19, 2024 edition of Business Day e-paper ran a concerning report on the arrest/summon/questioning of the Statistician-General of the Federation, Adeniran Adeyemi, which authorities never denied despite the unofficial sourcing of the news item and the expected anonymity protection for the sources quoted by the two reporters who jointly filed the report. The Tinubu presidency also did not try to, as it usually wont to negative reports which are difficult to outright deny, spin the worrying occurrence despite the heavy hit it took from the report leading to Adeyemi’s arrest/questioning.

Two days earlier, in a December 17, 2024 bombshell report, the National Bureau of Statistics (a federal government agency) had reeled out how insecurity had unprecedentedly devastated Nigerians on President Bola Tinubu’s watch in just one year of his presidency between May 2023 and April 2024.

The slamming of the Commander-in-Chief and his troop  by the government watchdog agency in the report titled Crime Experience and Security Perception, was praised for courage, while the villains; Tinubu and his pepper-soup generals were roundly panned by the citizens who daily bear the trauma of the surging insecurity about to eclipse the land.

Then came the more worrying aspect; Adeyemi returned from the security “debriefing” to cause a statement to be issued, claiming hackers had taken hold of the agency’s official website, casting a pall of doubt on the materials on the site, including the damning report on the worsening insecurity.

The terse statement read “The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) wishes to inform the public that its website has been compromised. Our team is actively working to resolve the issue and restore full functionality.

“We advise the public to disregard any messages or reports published on the website until further notice. Thank you for your understanding”

In just a moment of desperation, the Tinubu government yanked the cloak of credibility that had shawled the agency for years especially since the time of its former head, the irrepressible Yemi Kale (guess his dominant gene came from his military mum), considering that an average editor would think twice before running with any information from the supposed hacked website again, after what appeared like an under-duress self-sabotage and self- destruct.

Last week, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), another agency of the State, delivered another blow to the governance credentials of the Tinubu administration, still on insecurity, which is a main metric in determining whether a country is slipping in the Fragile State Index, which used to be known as the Failed State Index.

In the 2024 ranking, Nigeria was number 15 from bottom, with 96.6 score, only better than fading countries like Somalia which topped the chart of infamy, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Congo Democratic, Yemen, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Haiti, Chad, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Palestine and Mali, in that order of instability. What a company to be for the so-called giant of Africa!

: VP Shettima warns ‘detractors’: Stop fabricating conflict between me and Tinubu

Even Ukraine, fighting a three-year war with the invading super-power Russia, did better in governance stability, topping Nigeria with seven steps at number 22! And someone still screaming their president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was and still a jerk, who started a fight he was expecting someone else to win for him. Yes, the Ukrainian leader could somewhat fit into one of the identical twins in Shakespeare’s witty play “comedy of errors”, considering he was clowning for daily bread before presidency beckoned and could still be argued that he remains a jester at heart, but at least, governance has not become a tragicomedy in his backyard the way it has been for Nigeria and Nigerians in the past few years.

Truth is, it would be grossly unfair to heap all blame of the continuing collapse the country is witnessing on the Tinubu administration. By the public admission of some of his surrogates like the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, the president walked into a mess left behind by their fellow party-man and immediate president, Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari himself claimed he met and tried to work through the mess left behind by his immediate predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. Everyone is passing the buck, which should stop at their presidential desk. A viral joke settled the buck-passing in very hilarious way; “send us back to the past (pre-May 29 2015) when a bag of rice was 7,500”.

There is this prayer of “Lord please don’t let me know a better yesterday”. Now a lot of Nigerians can’t say Amen to it again. Their reality is that they have known a better yesterday and asking them to say the prayer above is like placing a curse on them. Now, they want their yesterday back, just like the North wants its power back.

When there is life, there is hope, they say. Ecclesiastes 9:4 says “a living dog is better than a dead lion”. But in Tinubu’s Nigeria, both lion and dog are not sure of tomorrow. The raging insecurity has made life and living very unpredictable in Nigeria. The sustainability ranking of countries by Fund for Peace, a think-tank body, which is now in its 20th year, is calculated on 12 parameters, with the major ones being security threats, economic implosion, human rights violations and refugee flows. In the 2023 ranking, Nigeria was placed in the Alert column in the global map. A year later, it moved to High Alert, which is the penultimate step to being placed in the company of Somalia and co. Out of the total 120 points for a country to be declared a failed venture, Somalia already chalked up over 111 points. The only African country in the Top 30 of sustainability index, led by Norway, is Mauritius, with a population of just 1,235,260 people according to its 2022 census. So much for bigness.

If a respected body had so rated Nigeria under the current administration, of what use is the administration trying to cage and contain conscientious state actors who are committed to the truth? What are we trying to shield away from the rest of the world?. Is it not obvious to all that all isn’t well, though as children of God we are to confess positives?

Yoruba will always encourage the filthy to speak out so they can be clothed.

In the 2024 Report, NBS claimed about N2.23 trillion had been paid as ransom to kidnappers between May 2023 and April 2024. It also revealed that close to 52 million crime incidents were recorded across Nigerian households in the period under review. How is Nigeria not moving towards the Somalia spot?

If the foreign (Fund for Peace is based in America) and domestic conclusions on the state of the Nigerian State, tallied, which evidence are we searching for again? Instead of gagging officials/agencies and using the security community to harass them into some unwritten oath of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, the Tinubu administration would do well to start looking for solutions to the widespread killings in the country, maybe now, outside of the Nigerian military. Foreign mercenaries have been variously suggested and the ones reportedly hired by the Jonathan administration were said to be doing just fine in helping Nigeria douse the insecurity conflagration until the Buhari presidency showed up and terminated them. It has been alleged that the Daura retired general sent the effective mercenaries packing because they were Israelis, meaning that religion could have played a major role in their firing since they were assumedly Christians.

That would be hare-brained, if true and the story was difficult to chew away as beer parlour gossip because Buhari was a known fundamentalist as a Muslim and all through his presidency, he never discharged himself of the charge of Christianophobia. He could do as alleged, though I would want to believe on his behalf he values human life too much, to be so petty to be piety.

If something is too difficult for you to fix, elementary sense suggests you get help. If you are in a losing dogfight and about to be obliterated and you are allowed to call in help, won’t a sensible fellow dial in fast? Why do all religions cry to God in prayer, if not for help. Even Russia, the top dog in its war with Ukraine has been calling for mercenary help from his allies, with North Korea taking the lead in the supply of men. Yoruba will say it is the children of nonentity that are usually sent on dangerous, midnightly errands. But that is what they signed up for. That is what they do. If that is the only deal our involvement with BRICS which has obviously drawn Trump’s ire and for which he is assumedly pushing US allies for class action against Nigeria in the area of visa issuance, knowing our love for jetting out at every excuse including treating presidents for nose/ear infection, would deliver to us, we should grab it.

Who cares where the mercenaries come from or their religions, as long as they are effective. Are the murderers sparing anyone on the basis of religion? Do bandits ask for religions professed by their victims before seizing them and collecting billions as ransom? Both Christians and Muslims and even traditional worshippers have been cut down by these bloody-thirsty animals and they won’t stop until they are stopped.

I saw a newspaper cartoon recently depicting Mr. President turning his back on a burning Nigeria while watering his 2027 re-election project. Nothing will be more apt. His National Human Rights Commission said terrorists and bandits killed 2,266 persons in the first six months of the same year he has been receiving endorsements for a second term in office, upanddown. And he is supposed to be the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces!

In the 2025 budget, about 10 per cent of the total projected expenditure, put at N4.9 trillion, will be spent on defence and security and midway into the year, both the skies are the land are already this crimson with nearly everyday killings. Yoruba will say Saturday is the barometer for Sunday. It is a double jeopardy when we lose trillions of naira and thousands of lives at the same time. Any deity that can’t save should at least leave the beleaguered adherent the way he was before seeking the help of the god that doesn’t tantalise. That is the multiple misfortunes Yoruba say should not befall anyone.

While Nigerians can afford to lose the budgeted trillions the way past allotments had gone, at least, let lives be meaningful again to the leaders. If they can’t ensure that, they should get out for those who can, or be thrown out.

Tony Ojukwu, the Executive Secretary of NHRC drove the point home with his take on the report, saying “These were not mere figures on a report; they were fathers, mothers, children, and breadwinners; families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, and futures extinguished in moments of senseless brutality.”

Let no nonsense DSS summons be served on him.