Good morning,
Senate President Godswill Akpabio spent Wednesday warning political parties not to drop veteran lawmakers. He told a forum in Abuja that high turnover deprives the National Assembly of expertise, and that parties should retain experienced hands because budget scrutiny and oversight require technical knowledge. It is a familiar argument from a man whose own career has depended on the system he now defends. The trouble is that his party’s campaign spokesman, Alwan Hassan, went on Arise News and said the quiet part loudly: “A lot of ministers pay billions to be appointed. The first thing they think of is how to recoup that money after being appointed.” Hassan called ministers “the most criminal elements in government” and confirmed that President Tinubu bypasses them and funds projects directly. So Akpabio wants continuity, while his own party’s mouthpiece says the continuity is a racket. If ministers buy their posts, retaining veterans is not institutional memory. It is protecting the investment.
The House of Representatives has summoned the CEOs of MTN, Airtel, Glo and Mafab to appear on 28 October over poor network quality, threatening arrest if they send junior staff again. It is a satisfying headline, and it will not fix a single dropped call. The NCC already has a compensation framework and a quality-of-service rulebook, and operators still logged 413,587 complaints in the first half of 2026. A parliamentary hearing is not a mast upgrade. The threat of arrest is theatre. Subscribers need capacity in dense areas, not subpoenas. The same week, AEDC announced power disruptions in the FCT to relocate 33kV transmission towers at Kukwaba, with no duration and no clear list of affected areas beyond vague “surrounding feeders”. Band A customers pay premium tariffs for interrupted supply. The notice was thin, and the inconvenience was not.
The NCDC has confirmed a case of the Bundibugyo Ebola strain in the FCT and deployed digital tracking tools for contact tracing. The patient is isolated, and health workers have been alerted. It is a faster response than 2014, when Nigeria relied on Dr Stella Adadevoh’s clinical instincts and lost her to the virus. But Abuja is a transport hub, and a single missed contact can seed wider transmission. The agency has urged the public to rely on verified channels. That is sensible, because panic spreads faster than any virus.
The Arewa Consultative Forum is demanding full disclosure of Nigeria’s minerals framework with the United States, signed in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The ACF says the deal is opaque, and it is right to ask who owns the geological data, who pays for environmental cleanup, and whether host communities get jobs, water and roads. Much of the confusion centres on the $700 billion figure, which was an estimate of Nigeria’s total mineral wealth, not the value of the agreement. Poor communication created the suspicion. And in Owerri, armed police and Imo waste agency officials raided Emenike Hospital, detaining the administrator and cashier, days after the former Super Eagles striker criticised governors over embezzlement. The timing is damning. The police have not explained the legal basis. The staff have not been released.
A Senate President defending veterans. A spokesman calling ministers criminals. A House threatening arrest over a network. A disco switching off power with a thin notice. A virus tracked digitally. A minerals deal kept opaque. A hospital raided after its owner spoke. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a state that performs accountability while protecting its own, and leaves the rest of us to manage the outages.
Warmly,
Lolade