Surviving the Forest, Surviving the System
Survivor tortured, Tompolo campaigns, naira slides, airtime restored, ₦20 trillion wasted on abandoned projects.
Good morning,
Aliyu Alaramma was farming with his elder brother when the bandits came for them. He spent five days in the forest, beaten, starved, blindfolded, and shot in the head. He survived by hitting one kidnapper with a stone and running until he collapsed near a stream, covered in his own blood. They had demanded ₦100 million for his release. He told them he had never seen that much money in his entire life. When they found photos of soldiers on his phone, they accused him of being an undercover operative. They tortured him harder.
Mr Alaramma is free now. But his story is not an exception. It is a pattern. While bandits and the Lakurawa terrorist group fight each other for control of territory in Niger State, civilians are caught in the crossfire. The government is nowhere to be found.
While Mr Alaramma was running for his life, Tompolo was launching a re-election campaign. The former militant leader, granted amnesty in 2009, has thrown his weight behind President Tinubu’s second-term bid. He wants Nigerians to support the President to consolidate economic reforms. The Door-to-Door Movement, founded and sponsored by Tompolo, will be inaugurated today at the Transcorp Event Centre in Abuja. His support reflects a growing alignment between the Presidency and former militant leaders.
Speaking of political calculations, the naira slid to 1,425 per dollar in the parallel market on Thursday, down from about 1,370 in February. Summer travel and school fees are driving demand. But as Professor Uche Uwaleke notes, seasonal demand alone cannot explain a significant divergence between the official and parallel markets. The underlying problem is a currency that cannot find its footing.
MTN has restored airtime lending services, ending weeks of disruption for about 40 million subscribers who rely on airtime borrowing to survive. The FCCPC suspended enforcement of its regulations following court orders and industry opposition. For a trader in Lagos who depends on airtime borrowing to stay connected with suppliers, or a student in Kano who uses it to access online learning materials, the restoration is not just a convenience. It is a lifeline.
And then there is the story that should shame us all. Nigeria has over ₦20 trillion in abandoned projects. The Chartered Institute of Project Managers of Nigeria put the figure at over ₦17 trillion in 2024. By November 2025, the House of Representatives had opened an investigation into abandoned federal projects estimated at more than ₦20 trillion. Bismarck Rewane has called the country a “morgue of abandoned projects”. The problem is not a lack of plans. It is a lack of evaluation. Policies are launched without ex-ante appraisal and terminated without ex-post evaluation. The result is a state that governs blindly, unable to distinguish its successes from its failures.
As I close this, I am thinking about Mr Alaramma, bleeding near a stream in the forest. The bandits demanded ₦100 million. Nigeria has wasted ₦20 trillion on projects that never got off the ground. Tompolo is launching a re-election campaign. The naira is sliding. Forty million Nigerians are breathing again because MTN restored airtime lending. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where systems are broken, where citizens are abandoned, where money disappears, and where the powerful organise while the vulnerable survive. The question is whether we will build systems that work, or simply wait for the next kidnapping, the next scandal, the next abandoned project.
Think about that as you start your day.
Warmly,
Lolade