Good morning,
Two weeks ago a friend watched a young man on an okada swerve so hard he nearly threw his passenger into an open drain. The manhole cover was gone. Just a black hole in the middle of the road, waiting. The Abia State Government has declared the removal of manhole covers a criminal offence, after vandals defeated 120 concrete replacements in Aba and Umuahia. A cover is worth perhaps ₦15,000 as scrap. A leg is worth more than that, but the thief does not do that maths.
Now, the political economy of a country is never far from the surface. In Enugu, supporters who arrived at 9am and stayed under white tents until 5pm protested when organisers offered them ₦4,000 each for a rally backing Governor Peter Mbah and President Tinubu’s 2027 bid. One video carried the line: “How can you give us only ₦5,000 for coming out from 9am to 5pm?” The same week, Tompolo’s movement donated 50 campaign vehicles, 25 each to Enugu and Cross River, at rallies that inaugurated the movement’s state chapters. The donor was represented by the managing director of Tantita Security Services, the firm that holds a federal contract to guard crude oil pipelines. Cross River’s government pledged 1.5 million votes for the president. The state has 1,928,978 registered voters. Meanwhile, Festus Keyamo says the ADC will contest 2027, but candidates from the David Mark faction, including Atiku Abubakar, could be disqualified depending on how the Supreme Court resolves the party’s leadership dispute. The High Court nullified the Mark-led leadership last week. The appeal will decide. The election is in January. Uncertainty, as ever, is the only certainty.
The security of the ordinary Nigerian is another matter entirely. In Kaduna, police rescued a six-year-old boy from a shop in Kunkumi and arrested two suspects after a ₦30,000 ransom was paid. The kidnappers had demanded ₦300,000. A demand negotiated down to a tenth tells you the family could not raise the asking price. It also tells you the kidnappers accepted. In Uromi, Edo State, a man posing as a pastor gathered residents for a community crusade, asked them to hand over their phones for blessings, and disappeared with the devices. The videos showed mostly women, crying and stranded. And in a Nigerian home, a rooftop solar installation caught fire. The exact cause has not been established, but the warnings about poor installation, faulty wiring and substandard components have been repeated in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt before. Solar is the right answer to our power problem. It is only as safe as the person who installs it.
The institutions that should catch us when we fall are not having a good week. INEC’s chairman says the commission has not received certified true copies of two recent Federal High Court rulings, one on Atiku’s candidacy and one on the president’s academic credentials, and will not act on social media reports. His reasoning is sound in the narrow sense. A judgement becomes an administrative instruction when it is served. It is also what a slow institution says. The same briefing revealed that 54 registration officers indicted for sabotaging voter registration are full-time staff of the commission. And the lights are still going off. The Minister of Power promised that affected generating units would return within 48 to 72 hours, blaming planned maintenance at Egbin, gas shortfalls and sabotage of transmission lines. But the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited disputes the gas claim, saying its transport network runs without constraints. The public is left with two official explanations. Both may be partly true. The difference matters because it determines who is blamed and who must act. At sea, nearly four out of ten ships owned by Nigerian interests are registered under foreign flags, depriving the country of registry revenue and oversight because the Nigerian Ship Registry cannot compete on cost, speed or international recognition.
So here is where we are. A state that cannot protect a concrete slab will struggle to convince an investor to build a factory. A crowd paid to attend will eventually audit the invoice, and the audit now happens on camera. A ransom of ₦30,000 is not a crime statistic. It is a price signal, and the market has learned that it clears. A crowd that will hand over a phone for a blessing will hand over a vote for less. Trust is the real currency, and it is being stolen twice. The manhole cover is the test. The solar panel is the test. The court order is the test. And the lights, as always, will measure us.
Warmly,
Lolade