Opinion

Tinubu’s top-down, one-partyist reelection strategy, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

5 months ago

January 3, 2026

Farooq Kperogi

Tinubu’s top-down, one-partyist reelection strategy, By Farooq Kperogi

What most Nigerians recognize as Nigeria’s creeping descent into stifling one-partyism, with what seems like the unstoppably expanding defections of major elected officials into the APC, is actually only President Bola Tinubu’s reelection strategy.

It is a strategy that may well unravel after the 2027 presidential election, but whose immediate effects are already distorting the country’s democratic ecosystem and hollowing out the meaning of political choice.

Tinubu’s consuming monomania for assembling all governors and legislators under the notional banner of the APC is structurally and substantively similar to previous presidents’ single-minded political expansionism under the PDP.

That earlier expansionism also provoked loud cries of one-partyist dictatorship from the commentariat and political opponents. History, it seems, is being cynically reenacted by people who had claimed to have learned from it.

If you go back in time and read stories, editorials, and analyses from or about the 1999 to 2014 PDP era, you will see sustained arguments that Nigeria was being nudged toward a de facto one-party system.

The fear then was that opposition parties were rendered functionally irrelevant through a venomous mix of incumbency power, institutional capture, induced defections and the systematic shrinking of political alternatives.

For instance, in an August 26, 2003, analysis in ThisDay titled “The Spectre of One-Party Rule,” Chukwudi Nwabuko relied on the late Pa Abraham Adesanya’s grim exhortation to frame the PDP’s 2003 electoral dominance (and the corresponding weakening of opposition parties) as indicative of a mordant slide toward one-party democratic autocracy. The anxiety was grounded in what Nigerians were witnessing in real time: an opposition that could barely breathe, let alone challenge power.

In a May 30, 2007, report after the presidential election that returned Umaru Musa Yar’adua as president, the International Crisis Group said the outcome marked a “further slide towards a one-party state.” It argued that PDP’s dominance was reinforced through captured institutions, selective anti-corruption pressure and especially rigged elections.

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This was not partisan rage. It was sober analysis by observers who had little interest in Nigerian party loyalties but a keen interest in democratic health.

In fact, in April 2008, then PDP chairman Vincent Ogbulafor bragged that the “PDP will rule for 60 years,” a statement that quickly became a trope of one-party symbolism. “I don’t care if Nigeria becomes a one-party state,” Ogbulafor said.

That boast is now memorialized as a defining rhetorical emblem of PDP-era political hubris, a moment when arrogance briefly dispensed with euphemism.

By September 19, 2010, a Reuters dispatch on a major resignation to challenge Goodluck Jonathan in PDP primaries casually included the assessment that Nigeria was “close to being a one-party state.” That line was telling. It showed how widely the one-partyist frame had spread beyond domestic commentary into international reportage. Nigeria’s democratic drift had become legible to outsiders.

It was against this background that Tinubu and his allies cast themselves as insurgents against PDP hegemony. They denounced the PDP’s one-partyist tendencies, mocked its hubris, and promised a more competitive political order. Now that Tinubu sits atop the same power structure, the irony is almost operatic. The script he once criticized is the same one he is now directing.

So why is Tinubu, who echoed the sentiments of the drift to one-partyism under the PDP and challenged it with all he had, playing the same game? There are two reasons I can divine for this, and neither flatters him nor augurs well for Nigeria’s democracy.

First, even the most hopelessly fanatical Tinubu supporter cannot deny that Tinubu’s domestic economic policies have been an unrelieved disaster for the vast majority of people.

With fuel subsidy gone, the naira aggressively devalued, petrol prices through the rooftops, an inflationary conflagration tearing everything apart, hunger on the rise, insecurity effectively democratized, hope on the run, and a looming taxation regime rooted in a legally questionable law, Tinubu has no positive record to run on.

There is nothing in the lived experience of most Nigerians that he can point to and say, “This is why you should renew my mandate.”

Economic pain can sometimes be sold as tough but necessary reform if people can see light at the end of the tunnel. In Tinubu’s case, the tunnel keeps getting darker, and the promised light keeps receding. In such circumstances, appealing directly to the electorate becomes politically suicidal.

Which brings me to the second reason. For the 2027 election, Tinubu will not directly appeal to everyday Nigerians to vote for him. Instead, he will take a circuitous route: he will ask governors to deliver votes for him in exchange for his support for their own reelections.

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It is a transactional politics stripped of pretense, a politics that treats voters as passive objects to be mobilized, coerced or managed by local power brokers.

So, like the PDP he once opposed, Tinubu is banking on governors, not the ordinary voters he governs, to reelect him for a second term. He is instrumentalizing the power of incumbency to bludgeon politicians into the APC, thereby transforming what should be a contest of ideas into a consolidation of power.

The mass defection of elected officials also achieves another crucial effect. It helps construct a notion of the inevitability of Tinubu’s reelection. If most of the governors of the federation are already in the APC and are actively campaigning for the president’s second term, what, many people will ask, is the point of opposing him?

This is a powerful rhetorical maneuver designed to demoralize the critical electorate and sap the energy of opposition forces. It encourages political apathy and fatalism. It nudges even those who dislike the government into thinking that resistance is futile, that the outcome is already predetermined.

That sense of inevitability is perhaps the most insidious weapon in the one-partyist arsenal. You do not need to ban opposition parties if you can convince people that opposing the ruling party is a waste of time. You do not need to rig every ballot if you can first rig expectations.

But history offers a cautionary tale that Tinubu and his strategists would do well to remember. The PDP once believed its dominance was permanent. It mistook elite defections for popular consent. It confused the silence of intimidation with the endorsement of legitimacy. When the reckoning came in 2015, it came swiftly and decisively.

One-partyist strategies can win elections, but they corrode the moral foundations of power. They produce brittle victories and hollow mandates. They also create pent-up frustrations that eventually find expression, often in unexpected and destabilizing ways.

Tinubu’s top-down reelection strategy may very well work in the short term. Governors may deliver. Legislators may comply. Opposition parties may fracture further.

But a democracy reduced to elite transactions is a democracy living on borrowed time. The deeper question is not whether Tinubu can secure a second term this way, but what kind of country will be left behind when the illusion of inevitability finally collapses.

Happy New Year to my readers!

Tinubu’s top-down, one-partyist reelection strategy, By Farooq Kperogi

Farouk Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based professor of Journalism

Related Topics:reelection strategy Tinubu

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Opinion

The Shettima danger for Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

7 days ago

May 30, 2026

Trends Admin

The Shettima danger for Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Sometime in January this year, a senior Lagos-Ibadan journalist called my attention to a news story in which President Tinubu’s Minister said with earnest certainty that dropping Vice President Kashim Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate would gravely imperil Tinubu’s reelection chances. He wanted to know what I thought about it.

I promised I would share my thoughts in a column the following week, but more urgent matters that needed my discursive interventions came up, and I didn’t get round to doing it. In the intervening months, several other people have echoed Musawa’s sentiments. As maneuvers for the 2027 election intensify, the question of Shettima’s place in Tinubu’s 2027 calculus keeps taking center stage.

To my knowledge, no one has sufficiently articulated the socio-historical, political, strategic, ethnographic and even emotive reasons for the choice of Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate, or why his replacement, especially with a northern Christian as is being rumored, would convulse the foundations of the Tinubu presidency.

I have pointed out in many past columns that in Nigeria’s emotional cartography, there are five broad ethnographic cocoons, which I like to sometimes call emotional maps, that have evolved independently and have broadly shaped voting and other kinds of national behavior.

There is the Northern Muslim Bloc that largely transcends northern ethnic boundaries, the Yoruba Bloc that mostly papers over religious differences, the Northern Christian Bloc that collapses ethnic and subregional borders, the Igbo Bloc that is self-explanatorily ethnically and religiously homogenous and the Southern Minority Bloc that encompasses a multiplicity of ethnicities that are neither Yoruba nor Igbo.

This emotional cartography isn’t intended to be a simplistic, self-sufficient and unnuanced mapping of diverse people into unproblematized boxes where there are no internal differences. It is intended only to show that, generically speaking, these broad collectivities tend to coalesce around the same affectional bonds in relation to national issues.

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In the politics of emotional affiliation to, or connection with, the center of power, feelings of group representation draw on these maps. For example, the appointment of General Christopher Gwabin Musa first as Chief of Defense Staff and later as Minister of Defense has been a source of recognizable representational nourishment for most northern Christians across ethnic and subregional divides, even though Musa is from Kaduna, which is supposed to be in the Northwest.

So, based on my mapping of the emotional contours of Nigeria’s ethnographic landscape, the Tinubu-Shettima ticket actually is not, strictly speaking, the Muslim-Muslim ticket people say or think it is. It is, in reality, a Yoruba-Muslim ticket. Here’s why.

Tinubu, like most Yoruba people, defines himself first and foremost as a Yoruba person before he is anything else. That was why, in his 2022 Abeokuta speech, he prefaced “Emi lo kan” with “Yoruba lo kan.” In other words, he derived the social, political and emotional basis for the legitimacy of his presidential aspiration from his Yoruba identity.

Islam is incidental, even expendable, to Tinubu’s identity. This was dramatized this week when the presidency had to debunk a bizarre rumor that Tinubu had converted to Christianity.

Shettima, on the other hand, can’t afford to define himself as Kanuri in the context of national politics. On the national stage, he is the symbolic representation of collective northern Muslims, although this does not erase his Kanuri and cosmopolitical credentials. In other words, Shettima is primarily a northern Muslim who provides the symbolic conduit through which Muslims in the North identify with the administration he is a part of.

Some, maybe even most, northern Muslims may disagree with the administration and even with Shettima himself. But that’s in the region of the head. In their hearts, however, it’s a different matter. It’s like having a mother you disagree with but whose presence you cherish nonetheless because her absence would create a crushing emptiness in you.

In fact, no northerner, whether Christian or Muslim, can stake his or her national political aspiration on an ethnic platform. They would usually choose a pan-northern platform or a religious justification for their aspirations, depending on the context.

It needs to be pointed out that I am not making any moral judgments here. Tinubu’s appeal to Yoruba nationalism is not inferior to northern politicians’ appeals to regional or religious solidarity. The differences merely reflect how differently we have evolved politically and emotionally.

Now, replacing Shettima with a northern Christian running mate is fair in view of what appears to be the systematic exclusion of northern Christians at the top since the return of democracy in 1999. However, even at the risk of being misunderstood, it needs to be pointed out that such a move would signal two things.

First, contrary to what many people are inclined to assume, it won’t be a Muslim-Christian ticket. It would be a Yoruba-Christian ticket. As I pointed out earlier, Tinubu’s self- and collective identity-definition is primarily Yoruba, and it’s the basis for his claim to the presidency. Until fairly recently, he didn’t even publicly identify with Islam and still stumbles when he tries to perform his secondary Muslim identity.

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Second, Tinubu has to contend with the altered demographic calculations for the 2027 election that the choice of a northern Christian running mate would present. In the 2023 election, most northern Christians voted for Peter Obi, with Benue State being the notable exception. In Benue, Tinubu rode on the coattails of the then wildly popular APC governorship candidate Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia to victory.

Since 63.6 percent of Tinubu’s 8,805,420 votes in 2023 came from the North, it is safe to assume that most of those votes came from the Northern Muslim Bloc. To get rid of the ethnographic, emotional symbol of such a bloc in your quest for a second term, you have to be able to compensate for the electoral loss such a move would most certainly provoke. That seems like a tall order.

True, northern Christians seem to have warmed up to the Tinubu administration, perhaps because the anxieties that activated their hostility haven’t materialized. In fact, in May 2025, as Tinubu prepared to travel to Rome for the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV, the presidency reportedly supplied THISDAY with data that showed 62 percent of Tinubu’s appointees were Christians.

Bayo Onanuga later echoed the same claim at the Vatican when he said he had read that 62 percent of the president’s cabinet members were Christians.

Tinubu’s handlers can point not only to presidency-supplied claims about Christian appointments but also to a trail of public statements by some northern Christian bodies and clerics who said, in varying degrees of intensity, that his appointments had softened, answered or “allayed” fears over the Muslim-Muslim ticket.

For example, Rev. Kelvin Pwajok of the Northern Christian Forum thanked Tinubu in September 2023 for appointing northern Christians such as George Akume and Christopher Musa to strategic positions. Dominic Alancha of All Christian Youths in Northern Nigeria said the group’s earlier reservations had been eased by Tinubu’s appointments. Rev. Yakubu Pam of Northern CAN said in January 2025 that Tinubu had shown reasonable inclusiveness.

Archbishop John Praise Daniel of the Northern Christian Religious Leaders’ Assembly said in October 2025 that Christians did not feel sidelined and that Tinubu’s appointments had allayed many fears. Rev. Amos Mohzo of COCIN also thanked Tinubu for supporting northern Christians through appointments such as Akume as SGF and Nentawe Yilwatda as APC national chairman. In May 2026, the Christian Northern Nigeria Progressive Forum backed Tinubu’s re-election and framed its support around inclusion, fairness and national stability.

By contrast, Muslim groups and clerics have complained that the Muslim-Muslim ticket has not translated into commensurate representation for Muslims in Tinubu’s appointments.

For example, the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria said Muslims remained politically marginalized despite their support for the ticket, while Professor Mansur Ibrahim Sokoto argued that Tinubu won Muslim votes but had since sidelined Muslims and the North.

Yoruba Muslim bodies have made a more specific regional case. MURIC has repeatedly alleged that South-West Muslims have been shortchanged. It even described some appointments as “Christian-Christian” under a Muslim-Muslim presidency. The Concerned Yoruba Muslim Scholars in Nigeria said Yoruba Muslims had expected Tinubu’s presidency to redress their long-standing marginalization but have instead faced deeper exclusion. MUSWEN also said South-West Muslims are underrepresented in federal appointments relative to their demographic strength and intellectual weight.

In other words, dropping Shettima in favor of a Christian running mate would effectively create a perceptual “Christian-Christian” ticket in the North. Northern politicians like Musawa who have an intimate familiarity with the sociology of northern politics know that this would sound the death knell of Tinubu’s second term bid, especially in light of Peter Obi’s dominance in the Southeast, which will deprive Tinubu of bloc votes from the South.

This choice comes with an even more poignant existential implication. Historically, in moments of political trauma, northern elites tend to instrumentalize religion to rouse the masses to popular action. Should Tinubu somehow manage to “win” without a northern Muslim running mate, he could have an unprecedentedly convulsive Nigeria to preside over.

The Shettima danger for Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Don’t Label Oyo Kidnappers as ‘Islamic Jihadists’ – Saudi-Based Nigerian Scholar Warns

Published

2 weeks ago

May 23, 2026

Trends Admin

Saudi-based Nigerian Islamic scholar, Mallam Ibrahim Agunbiade

Don’t Label Oyo Kidnappers as ‘Islamic Jihadists’ – Saudi-Based Nigerian Scholar Warns

Says criminality remains criminality, warns against dangerous religious profiling

A Saudi-based Nigerian Islamic scholar, Mallam Ibrahim Agunbiade, has cautioned against the growing tendency to brand criminal gangs operating in Oyo State and other parts of the South-West as “Islamic jihadists,” warning that such narratives are misleading and capable of igniting dangerous religious tension.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Agunbiade, a Taalib (student) at Jami’ei, Islamic Propagation Rabwa in Saudi Arabia, expressed deep concern over the direction of public discourse surrounding insecurity in Oyo State, particularly following the recent abduction of pupils and teachers from three schools in the Oriire Local Government Area.

The scholar specifically referenced a programme on Splash FM 105.5 FM, “State of the Nation,” anchored by Edmund Obilo, where, according to him, repeated references were made to kidnappers and criminal gangs as “Islamic jihadists” allegedly bent on conquering the South-West and establishing dominance.

“Such sweeping and emotionally charged narratives may attract public attention, but they are not only misleading; they are also capable of creating dangerous religious tension in an already fragile society,” Agunbiade wrote.

He described the recent attacks in Oriire as “indeed tragic and condemnable,” adding that every responsible citizen must rise against such barbaric acts. However, he questioned the logic of automatically labelling criminal activities as religious missions.

“Since when did kidnapping schoolchildren become an Islamic mission? Since when did abducting innocent teachers and pupils become a religious obligation?” he asked.

“It is both irresponsible and intellectually dishonest to automatically label every violent criminal activity involving suspected Fulani bandits or kidnappers as ‘Islamic jihad.’ Criminality should remain criminality. Evil should be called evil without dragging religion into matters where religion itself clearly stands opposed to such actions.”

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Agunbiade pointed out what he described as a critical irony: many of the victims of these attacks are themselves Muslims. He noted that among the kidnapped pupils and affected families are Muslims whose lives have been shattered by the same criminals.

“So, how does one logically arrive at the conclusion that these kidnappers are fighting an ‘Islamic cause’ while terrorizing Muslim communities and targeting Muslim children?” he queried.

The scholar emphasised that Islam has never permitted the kidnapping of innocent people, attacks on schools, or the creation of fear and instability in society. He stressed that those who commit such crimes are enemies of humanity and enemies of peace, regardless of the language they speak or the religion they claim.

He further noted that respected Islamic bodies and leaders in Oyo State have openly condemned these criminal acts. He cited the Oyo State chapter of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), which has issued statements condemning insecurity and calling for urgent government intervention. He also mentioned the Grand Imam of Oyo, Sheikh (Barrister) Bilal Husayn Akinola Akeugberu, as well as prominent Islamic organizations including MUSWEN, who have publicly expressed concern and called on authorities to intensify efforts toward rescuing victims and restoring peace.

“These are the voices that deserve amplification in our public discourse — voices of reason, peace, unity, and responsibility,” Agunbiade said.

He warned that when media narratives lean toward religious profiling instead of objective analysis, they risk inflaming ethnic and religious suspicion among citizens who have coexisted peacefully for decades.

“The role of the media in times of insecurity is not merely to sensationalize fear or promote divisive assumptions. Journalism carries a moral burden. Broadcasters and public commentators must exercise caution in their choice of words, especially in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society like Nigeria. Words are powerful. A careless narrative repeated consistently can gradually poison public perception and sow seeds of hatred among innocent people,” he cautioned.

Agunbiade acknowledged the seriousness of insecurity in the South-West, noting that communities are under pressure, farmers are afraid, travellers are anxious, and parents are worried. However, he insisted that solving insecurity requires facts, intelligence gathering, effective policing, and sincere governance — not religious stereotyping.

“We must avoid turning a security crisis into a religious war narrative. Once criminality is wrongly framed as a battle between religions, the real perpetrators hide behind the confusion while innocent citizens suffer discrimination and hostility,” he said.

The scholar called on government at all levels to strengthen local security architecture, equip law enforcement agencies adequately, improve intelligence operations, and ensure that criminal elements are arrested and prosecuted. He also urged traditional rulers, community leaders, religious institutions, and civil society groups to work together in promoting vigilance and unity instead of suspicion and division.

“At this critical moment, Nigerians must refuse to allow fear to destroy the peaceful coexistence that binds communities together. Kidnappers are criminals, not representatives of any faith. Terrorists are enemies of humanity, not ambassadors of religion,” Agunbiade stated.

He concluded: “The fight before us is not Islam versus Christianity, nor North versus South. The real battle is between law-abiding citizens and criminal elements threatening the peace of society. Anything short of this understanding only deepens the crisis.”

Mallam Ibrahim Agunbiade is a Taalib (student) at Jami’ei, Islamic Propagation Rabwa, Saudi Arabia, and can be reached via agunbiadeib@gmail.com.

Don’t Label Oyo Kidnappers as ‘Islamic Jihadists’ – Saudi-Based Nigerian Scholar Warns

Opinion

IGP Disu: Inside the rotting walls of Zone II

Published

2 weeks ago

May 22, 2026

Trends Admin

IGP Disu: Inside the rotting walls of Zone II

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, May 22, 2026)

Except for its motto and morality, there is hardly anything wrong with the Nigeria Police Force. If burnished in the furnace of grammar, the statement, “Police is your friend,” which is the motto of the Nigeria Police, is wrong because ‘police’ is a plural noun, and so, cannot legally coexist with ‘is’, a singular tense. Therefore, to put the motto in the right grammatical drive, the statement should read, “The police are your friend(s).” Aside from the test of grammar, the motto also fails the test of authenticity because, as everyone knows, the Nigeria Police Force is friendless and loveless.

But this wasn’t the fate of the force some 40 years ago when I walked into the Okigwe police station, stranded and needing a place to lay my head for the night. Early in the day, before the second crow of cock, I had boarded ‘The Young Shall Grow’ bus from Lagos en route to Okigwe, the home of Imo State University, where I had just been admitted.

It was a mobileless era when a letter sent by post to a distant state travelled like a tortoise with arthritis, crawling for weeks or months before reaching its destination. As soon as I got my admission letter from JAMB, I headed eastwards, afraid of missing the registration window and ultimately forfeiting my admission. The Lagos Liaison Office of the school had no information because it was on recess. Quickly, I borrowed the wisdom in a Yoruba proverb that says: “Kí ojú má rí’bi, gbogbo ara ni ògun ẹ̀’. Translated: “For the eyes not to see evil, the whole of the body must be agile.” So, I hit Oshodi, boarded a bus, and moved agilely to Okigwe.

However, Nigeria happened on the road.

Head of Zone II, Assistant Inspector-General Moshood Jimoh

Due to mechanical delays and a poor road network, the bus didn’t reach Okigwe until late in the night when the whole town was in bed, except the dingy police station. Though I was a lad who had never travelled outside the south-west and spoke not a syllable of Igbo, I knew police stations across the country were a place of refuge and fortress. I knew the Nigerian police, in a good measure, embodied the spirit of service and protection.

Similarly, “To protect and to serve” is the spirit behind the motto of police departments across the United States. But somewhere along Nigeria’s broken national journey, the Nigeria Police Force lost its spirit, service, and protection.

The reasons for this monumental loss are clear to the blind eye. With a numerical strength of 371,800 officers and men, the police-to-citizen ratio in Nigeria is about one police officer to every 637 citizens, which falls short of the United Nations’ recommendation of one cop to 430 persons. To attain the UN benchmark, experts say the country’s police force must hit between 650,000 and 684,000. A force starved of funding, adequate welfare, modern technology, equity and fairness cannot produce saints in uniform.

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The officer on duty that night in Okigwe was courteous but pitiable. I introduced myself and showed him my admission letter. He wondered why someone would leave Lagos for Okigwe. “Uhmm! My brother, you can see di way we dey here o. NEPA don take light. If you fit manage for dat place till morning; day go soon break,” he pointed to a concrete slab that was about to be my king-size bed. But providence had a deal lined up for me. As I sat on the slab, contemplating how I was going to sleep, a man in mufti walked in, spoke with the policeman on duty, and went to rummage through a chest of drawers at the back of the counter. He was a policeman. On his way out, he stopped and shot a glance at the man on duty, asking with his eyes who I was. “The boy na student of IMSU. He no know say di school never resume, and na from Lagos im come. He wan sleep here till morning.”

The man in mufti spoke Igbo to me. I smiled and told him I didn’t understand Igbo.

“So, you bi Yoruba from Lagos?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ha!” Why you come suffer come dis far? Why you no stay for Lagos or Ibadan?”

“I have spent all my life in Lagos and wanted a change.”

“Hia! Mosquitoes go chop you finish for dis station o. If you no mind, you fit come and manage with me till morning. Day go soon break.”

Though I felt safe in the station, I couldn’t bring myself to reject the Good Samaritan’s offer. So, we both left the station in a pall of darkness and headed to his abode, which was a stone’s throw away. As we made our way through bush paths to his house, I asked if there was a watering hole where we could have some beer. “All of dem don close. Okigwe dy sleepy once university no dey session,” he said, and added, “You dey hungry? I no get food for house o,” smiling. I told him I was hungry. So, we went to a house where he knocked on the door, and a sleepy woman opened the door and sold us bread, moin-moin and soda, which I paid for. On the way to his house, I fished a packet of Consulate cigarettes out of my pocket, the policeman whistled in admiration and said, “You bi original Lagos boy!”

Darkness escorted us to his house, which looked like an abandoned poultry shed. “This is where I dey manage o,” he said in a welcome. The house was built with corrugated iron, with holes that let in the rays of the moon through cracks. He showed me his mattressless king-size bed. “I go sleep on the floor,” he said, “You fit sleep on the bed.” It was a large-hearted moment of benevolence, and I was deeply moved. I spread my clothes over the naked springs, lay down and pretended to sleep, peeping at the sky through the cracks in the roof, silently asking God if He could see what I was going through. I prayed silently that I may succeed in my academic journey in the land of the rising sun.

At dawn, he showed me his bathroom – if courtesy permits me to call it a bathroom. Four sticks rammed into the earth, wrapped with palm fronds, roofless and doorless. In that jacuzzi, the heavens watched your nakedness while passersby viewed your legs as your towel or wrapper served as a door. I took my bath with the brown water my benefactor provided and headed to the school to see things for myself, offering profuse thanks for the memorable accommodation.

That was the situation of the police force 40 years ago: poor, neglected, unpaid – yet still recognisably human. Today, the situation has not changed, the motto has not changed, but the morality and purpose of the force have changed drastically. Today, poverty remains, but humanity has fled. The bloodstream of the police has been infected. Police stations are no longer safe for the police and the citizens.

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I have encountered one thousand and one ugly police experiences bordering on corruption, impunity, wickedness and opportunism. I can’t mention all, but the sheer devilry behind police actions was shocking. One was when my uncle, Abel Odesola, was killed on the Ife-Ilesa Expressway by a drunk driver in an accident in 2005, and the police at Atakumosa police station demanded a bribe from my family before they could release his corpse. I refused to pay the bribe and got my uncle’s corpse out. Another was when a team of policemen arrested me in the Ajegunle area of Osogbo, took me to the station for standing up to their impunity. On the way to the station, they told the eldest among them to lie that I slapped him. Little did they know that I was recording all our exchanges on the way to the station. The Osun Commissioner of Police threatened to sack them, and I had to beg on their behalf.

Now, age has tempered my intolerance of police impunity. Today, I often resist the temptation to escalate police misconduct on the pages of newspapers because I understand the internal mechanics of the force. The recklessness of a corporal can stain the career of a commissioner. One scandal can trigger a chain reaction. So, I often let things slide.

This was exactly what happened two years ago when officers made unprofessional demands of me at the Zone II Command Headquarters of the NPF, Onikan. I declined to comply but let it slide. This was after I went upstairs and complained to one of their bosses. I knew if I went to the press with the unprofessional actions of the junior officers, the embarrassment would travel upwards.

Thunder struck the same spot early again this year when I took a case of fraud to the notorious Zone II Zonal Command Headquarters, Onikan. It took PUNCH authorities to call the IG’s office to complain about the actions of the officers of the zone before the case could even be listed for investigation. The immediate past leadership of the zone appeared disturbingly indifferent, maybe deliberately so, for some reasons best known to it.

In a petition I wrote to the command on December 11, 2025, I complained about a suspected fraudster named Wole, who fraudulently obtained $8,800 from me during the process of helping him to buy a 2014 Toyota 4Runner from the US. The criminal suspect had lied to me that he was working with Dangote Refineries and repeatedly assured me repayment was guaranteed. This was in 2022. When I realised the suspect had no job, I personally helped him secure job opportunities, including two banking jobs and an accounting position with a major newspaper in the country.

The suspect turned all the jobs down, citing flimsy excuses.

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That was when it finally dawned on me that the suspect was playing games. So, I gave him an eight-month deadline, warning that I would initiate legal actions if he failed to pay me by November 2025. When he failed to pay, I wrote a petition to Zone II, titled “Re: Fraudulent Obtainment of $8,88,” which was received and signed by the zone on December 11, 2025. Wole wrote an undertaking at the zone that he would pay me the equivalent of N500,000 in dollars every month. He only paid for January, February and March. Efforts to get the zone to reach Wole had been futile as excuses tumbled down from Onikan, with the investigating police officer, Mrs Priscilla Erroim, telling me that the suspect was not picking up her calls, while he cruised the streets in the silver-coloured Toyota 4Runner with number plate LSD 388 HS.

I had thought that when an officer goes on transfer, the cases they were handling would be transferred to another officer. More so, the suspect included his residential address in the undertaking. This was not the case with Zone II. The case was just left in limbo. At the commencement of the case, I had a very rough time with Erroim, who is a Chief Superintendent of Police, and her subordinate named Francis. But we later resolved the conflict between us.

When I could not make a headway with Erroim and Francis, I called the Zonal PRO, Mr Gbenga Afolayan, a deputy superintendent of police, who said the officers handling the case before they were transferred should tell me who they had handled the case to. Thus, the case ran into a cul-de-sac. But an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr Ojugbele, distinguished himself by making genuine efforts to intervene.

I had thought that the recent shake-up within the force by the Inspector General was yielding results when I texted the new Head of Zone II, Assistant Inspector-General Moshood Jimoh, who acknowledged my text and promised that the zone would look into the case. I was pleasantly shocked! “Here’s an AIG responding to a random citizen personally, while the former AIG in charge of the zone wouldn’t respond,” I thought to myself. The Nigeria Police Force is working!

I acknowledged Jimoh’s prompt response in my article published in THE PUNCH on Friday, May 15, 2026, titled, “IG’s deployments and the rebirth of Zone II.” The article was published under another article, “Adeleke: Crime cannot dethrone Apetu and enthrone Oluwo.”

How wrong was I! Little did I know that what appeared to attract Jimoh to respond to my texts was not duty, but the allure of my foreign telephone number. Or, how do I explain that calls and texts to him after I introduced myself and made the publication were ignored? It left me wondering what manner of service and protection the common man gets from the police force if a columnist with the most widely read newspaper in the country could be tossed up and down by officers?

As it happened to me two years ago at Zone II, Onikan, so it has happened to me again this year: officers deliberately erect obstacles before citizens, preparing the ground for exploitation. I’m sure the shake-up initiated within the force by the IG is part of ongoing reforms aimed at re-energising the force. But for men and officers of Zone II, Onikan, this reform is like water bouncing off a rock. The IG must break that rock; otherwise, his efforts would go down the drain.

There is no nobler honour than for men and women to put their lives on the line for the safety of their country. This is why I spare no effort in commending the nation’s security agencies whenever they do right. But when corruption takes the place of conscience, then the walls of police institutions begin to rot from within.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

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