Good morning,
A nursing student in Jalingo lost a finger in a hostel raid that should never have happened twice. Hoodlums broke into the female hostel overnight, stole phones and valuables, and allegedly raped one student. It was the second attack in two weeks. Her colleagues have refused to attend classes until the campus is made safe. The state has promised security and follow-up talks. Promises do not lock doors. Guards and fences do.
The polling numbers have moved, and so has Nyesom Wike. SBM Intelligence puts President Tinubu’s net favourability at -3.3 in September, up from -58.5 in May. That is a 55-point swing, driven largely by rural voters who credit leadership for short-term improvements. Urban voters remain unconvinced, preferring the NDC over the APC by 49.5 to 20.9 per cent. Then there is Wike, who has declared that securing Tinubu’s re-election is his primary political goal, his life’s work, his singular mission. He also denied that the Rainbow Coalition exists to destabilise party structures. Both things can be true. The FCT Minister has built a career on being indispensable to whoever holds power. In 2022, he lost the PDP primary and refused to support Atiku. By 2023, he was working for Tinubu. Now he has a coalition and a loyalty pledge. The APC governors are watching. Thirty-one of them want a unified campaign structure under their control. Wike’s parallel network would bypass them. That is the fight to come.
In Aba, the People’s Elephants have fallen off a cliff. Enyimba sit at the bottom of the NPFL with zero points from three matches, having lost 1-0 at home to newly promoted Inter Lagos. On Monday, police arrived at training and arrested the stadium manager. Players abandoned the session and went to the station to seek his release. A nine-time league champion and two-time African champion, reduced to this. You have to wonder whether the off-pitch chaos, the leadership disputes between Nwankwo Kanu’s board and the state-appointed sporting director, is the real reason for the collapse. Meanwhile, Burna Boy drove a ₦9 billion custom Bugatti through Lagos, and Davido announced a three-night residency at the remodelled National Theatre. One club cannot buy a win. Two artistes cannot stop buying headlines.
Elsewhere, the state is doing some things right. The NSCDC raided an illegal juice factory in Badagry, seizing unregistered Barkas Juice made with untreated water and fake NAFDAC numbers, arresting two women and rescuing two teenagers aged 15 and 16. And a Nigerian drug trafficker who escaped a Liberian prison was recaptured within hours, though the bigger story is that two Liberian anti-drug officers were convicted alongside him. Corruption in uniform enables the trade.
A student lost a finger. A president gained 55 points. A football club lost its way. A trafficker returned to a cell. A singer drove a car worth more than 10,000 annual salaries. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where safety is negotiated, power is transactional, institutions crumble, and wealth performs while the rest of us watch. The question is whether we will build systems that protect the vulnerable, or simply keep clapping for the motorcade.
Warmly,
Lolade