If you have ever witnessed the Ede masquerade, the Aladoko, or the Alamudu perform, you will instantly appreciate the poetry of Niyi Osundare, the world-renowned poet. Osundare hails from Ekiti, as do these mesmerizing masquerades. Had education not found him, Osundare might well have been a bearer of one of these magnificent masks—adorned with multicolored feathers and mirrors cascading from the nape to the feet—chanting profound verses with the captivating grace of tradition.

The Ede masquerades are revered for their boundless knowledge, weaving chants on any subject with a voice as sonorous as a nightingale’s. Their repertoire spans reflections on nature, the environment, the economy, the essence of power, and the tribulations of life. These living archives of wisdom mirror the poetic genius of Osundare, who embodies the spirit of his Ekiti heritage.

Yet, education found Osundare. Had it not, he might today be a celebrated Aladoko or Alamudu, thrilling audiences with the eloquence of the masquerades.

I first encountered Osundare in 1982. That year, word spread one evening that emerging poets and performers would gather in one of our lecture theatres. Joining the crowd of eager students, I witnessed a creative spectacle featuring Wole Soyinka,  Oyin Ogunba, Niyi Osundare, Kole Omotosho, Odia Ofeimun, Funso Aiyejina, and our American professor, Bob Fox, performing their works. Literary critics like Biodun Jeyifo, Ropo Sekoni, Bayo Williams, and Wole Ogundele were in attendance, while a young East African lecturer, Mutambuka, served as MC.

Osundare etched himself in my memory that evening with the refrain of one of his poems: “Jenje kiti, kiti jenje.” It immediately struck me that this poet must be Ekiti. My curiosity piqued, I became one of the first to purchase his debut poetry collection, Songs of the Marketplace, published in 1983. This book would later win the 1986 Association of Nigeria Authors prize and joint winner of the Commonwealth Prize.

The release was a sensation—not in the way of pop culture, but among us, young students of literature, who were grappling with the frustrations of a repressive regime. In that collection was a poem that became an anthem of our restlessness: “I Sing of Change.” Interestingly, this poem was reportedly the original title for the collection before it was changed to Songs of the Marketplace.

Change, as we yearned for, would come eventually, but Osundare has never ceased to long for a deeper transformation in our land. With awards upon awards and prizes upon prizes, he has dazzled the world with his creativity and prolificacy. And while we marvel at his accomplishments, we await the ultimate recognition. I promise you, it shall come—In Our Own Very Eyes. It shall be part 2 for our glorious land if you know what I mean.

There appears to be panic and deep pain in Afe Babalola’s actions since the publication and sales of the new international bestseller, Dele Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System. It became a bestseller precisely because the all-powerful Babalola is determined to stop Nigerians and the international community from reading it. Apparently, no one has explained to him that the best way to get everybody to read a book is to tell them that they must not read it. Babalola has however persisted in his errors by getting a court to restrain Dele Farotimi Publishers, as well as bookshops, from circulating and selling the book. MA Adegbola, the presiding judge, restrained the defendants and their republishers, including Amazon Online Bookstore, Rovingheights Bookstore, Booksellers Bookstore, Jazzhole Lagos Bookstore, Glendora Bookshop, Quintessence Lagos Bookstore, and Patabah Books Limited, from further publishing and selling the book. Deep panic.

Penultimate week, the Ekiti police command, acting on behalf of Babalola, had arrested Farotimi over alleged defamation and cyberbullying. The activist was accused of spreading false information against Babalola. That was not enough, subsequently the inspector-general of Police filed a 12-count charge bordering on cybercrime against Farotimi. The ruling on the book followed an application by Kehinde Ogunwumiju, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and managing partner at Afe Babalola & Co. seeking N500 million in damages from Farotimi for allegedly defaming him in the book. The said book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, is an unfiltered, freewheeling critical account of Farotimi about some top Nigerian legal firms and the Nigerian judiciary.

Many of my readers will wonder how some top lawyers can pursue routes to futility with such determination. The  book gained tremendous traction, reaching a top spot on Amazon’s bestseller list within days of cascading police actions against Farotimi, following Babalola’s petition last week. PDF copies of the book, which was launched in July, have circulated widely in the last one week due to the free publicity offered by Babalola. Now the entire Nigerian Police Force might be placed in streets all over the country on a “search and hide the book” mission. Goodluck Babalola.

Meanwhile, all that the 104-page book did was to research what led to the accusation that the law firm was guilty of “compromising the integrity of the Supreme Court,” scheming with “crooked lawyers and incompetent justices,” and “doctoring” a Supreme Court judgement. It also accused Babalola of corrupting the Supreme Court in the service of his clients. The problem is that most Nigerians would consider such accusations to be most likely TRUE.

The response of Babalola, the police, and the judiciary has been extreme punishment for Farotimi for daring to tell his story. It is for this reason that civil society organisations strongly condemn the arrest, detention, persecution and torture of Farotimi. The manner of his arrest was an aberration and Farotimi should never have been subjected to the criminal justice process in this case. In addition, the prohibitive terms of bail for what is supposed to be a misdemeanour raises the real possibility that Farotimi’s right to be tried – as required by Nigeria’s constitution – by a court “constituted in such a manner as to guarantee its independence and impartiality” has been compromised.

There are many troubling aspects of Farotimi’s encounter with Nigerian law enforcement, beginning with the unnecessarily aggressive and confrontational manner in which his arrest was affected. The CCTV footage released by his office after his arrest revealed the thoroughly unprofessional and violent nature of the police officers who travelled out of the state of their posting to arrest him. The officers were not dressed in uniform and could have passed as armed thugs. They also threatened Farotimi’s staff for no reason after unlawfully seizing their phones. The brutal manner of his arrest suggests the apprehension of a bandit on a most-wanted list, rather than a publicly accessible human rights lawyer.

Even more troubling than the manner of the arrest was the reason adduced for it. Before he was unlawfully “picked up” from his office on the 2nd of December, Farotimi had foretold the Nigerian public of his impending arrest. In a press release that went out from his office a day before, he stated that the police had invited him to answer certain claims he had made in his most recent book. Farotimi went on to state that his impending arrest was being orchestrated by two powerful individuals – Tony Elumelu and Babalola – who were apparently displeased with the unflattering depictions he had made of them in his book. Rather than challenging his claims by suing him for defamation in a civil court, they decided to wield their enormous influence to have him arrested, detained, and charged to court for a crime that does not exist in the jurisdiction of his arraignment.

Defamation is a civil matter and should be treated as such. Section 4 of the Police Act 2020 clearly forbids the police from wading into civil matters. In an orderly society built on the rule of law, those contending the veracity or otherwise of the claims Farotimi made in his book or who feel he has defamed them in any of his writings or speeches would seek justice in the civil court, where Farotimi would have had to defend his claims or provide redress, should he have been found to have maligned their character. In the process, the resources of the Nigerian state, our law enforcement agents, and our criminal justice system would not be trivialised and expended on pursuing personal vendettas. When a person feels that his or her reputation has been tarnished, the law creates opportunities for redress in a civil court. As Nigeria’s Supreme Court pointed out in 2021, criminal defamation was invented by the ‘Star Chamber” in late Mediaeval England. That is why it has been written out of the law in most states in Nigeria, as well as in many more Commonwealth countries.

Another troubling aspect of this saga is the fact that Farotimi was charged by the Police before a Magistrate Court in Ekiti State on 16 counts of criminal defamation. However, criminal defamation is unknown to the Ekiti State’s Criminal Law of 2021, which currently spells out the criminal law regime in Ekiti State. It also does not exist in the Criminal Code of Lagos where Farotimi resides, works, presumably wrote his book, and was abducted from. Our Constitution provides in Section 36(12) that “subject as otherwise provided by this Constitution, a person shall not be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence is defined and the penalty therefore is prescribed in a written law”. The Nigerian Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this canonical provision as the anchor of our criminal jurisprudence, so we are left to wonder under which powers the court in Ekiti presumed to order the remand of Farotimi. Moreover, the act of charging Farotimi before the Magistrate Court for a “crime” that the Court clearly did not have jurisdiction to entertain, is an abuse of legal processes.

The Police should drop the charges against Farotimi and he should be immediately released without preconditions. The Attorney General of Ekiti State should step in immediately to officially discontinue the case against Farotimi if the police do not act fast enough in doing so. All laws that support criminal defamation in Nigeria’s criminal jurisprudence should be immediately repealed and cases initiated under those laws should be struck out by the courts. We need to make the case that our law enforcement agencies need to uphold their constitutional mandate to serve and protect citizens, rather than act as tools for the powerful to silence dissent.  

In school, I never enjoyed group work. Being at the mercy of another person’s effort was frustrating to me — and still is. That’s probably why I picked a career where most of my day-to-day tasks can be done solo.

Still, it’s impossible for most people to go through life without any professional collaboration. And while it can be fun to work with someone who’s also a friend, it can make collaboration even more complicated. 

Recently, I listened to an episode of Simon Sinek’s podcast “A Bit of Optimism” where he asked restaurateur Will Guidara about advice for maintaining a friendship with someone while working with them. 

The key, they agreed, is communication, something every relationship needs to thrive. “The motivations have to be similar and very clear expectations set early on,” Sinek said. “Because we will make assumptions about the other person’s commitment.”

The same can be said of tackling team projects at work. If you assume someone will finish something by a certain deadline but they aren’t aware of that expectation, resentment can build.

Communication is even more important if you’re friends with your colleague, as you then need to interact on two different planes: personal and professional. 

“You can’t stop being friends,” Guidara told Sinek. “You don’t replace the friendship relationship with a colleague relationship. You now have two relationships.”

I’m not sure group projects will ever be my preferred way to work, but now at least I have some guidance that will make collaborating more pleasant and less likely to ruin a friendship.

CNBC

As President Bola Tinubu prepares to present the 2025 national budget to the National Assembly, the Federal Government is poised to significantly overshoot its domestic borrowing target for 2024 by N4 trillion, representing a 67% increase from the initial budget projection.

The escalating borrowing comes despite widespread concerns about the nation's mounting debt burden. Preliminary data reveals that the government has already borrowed N8.93 trillion from domestic investors in the first eleven months of 2024, compared to the planned N6 trillion for the entire year. Current borrowing trends suggest that total borrowing could reach N10 trillion by year-end.

This borrowing surge coincides with the government's plans for the 2025 budget, which aims to finance a deficit of N9.22 trillion through domestic and external borrowings. This represents an 18% increase from the N7.808 trillion deficit in 2024.

According to the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, the 2025 budget deficit will be financed through:

- New domestic and foreign borrowings of N9.22 trillion

- N312.33 billion from privatization proceeds

- N3.55 trillion in drawdowns on existing multilateral and bilateral project-tied loans

Detailed borrowing breakdown shows that in the third quarter of 2024, the government borrowed N2.134 trillion through various instruments:

- Nigeria Treasury Bills (NTBs): N1.181 trillion

- FGN Bonds: N939.246 billion

- FGN Savings Bonds: N14 billion

The Debt Management Office (DMO) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data also highlight significant growth in domestic debt. In the first half of 2024, the Federal Government's domestic debt stock increased by 38.6% to N66.957 trillion from N48.314 trillion in the same period in 2023.

Borrowing composition in the first half of 2024 included:

- NTBs: N11.8 trillion (17.64% of total borrowing)

- Monthly FGN Bond auctions: N52.315 trillion (78.13% of total)

- Sukuk Bonds: N1.092 trillion (1.6% of total)

- FGN Savings Bonds: N55.196 billion (0.08% of total)

The significant increase in borrowing raises questions about the government's fiscal strategy and long-term economic sustainability.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have agreed to extend a six-month grace period for Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, giving them time to reconsider their planned departure from the regional bloc. The decision follows a summit on Sunday, where ECOWAS leaders sought to address the countries’ scheduled exit, set for January 29, 2024, exactly one year after the three nations announced their intention to leave.

The exit marks a significant reversal of decades of regional integration. Despite ECOWAS efforts, the junta-led governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—located in the insurgency-ravaged Sahel—have increasingly distanced themselves from the bloc. These countries have formed their own alliance, deepened defense ties, and even considered abandoning the West African currency union.

In a joint statement on Saturday, the three countries reaffirmed that their decision to leave ECOWAS is final. They also announced that, even after their exit, they would maintain visa-free travel for all ECOWAS citizens—a move seen as an attempt to mitigate concerns about the impact on the bloc’s freedom of movement and common market, which serves 400 million people.

The planned withdrawal comes at a turbulent time for the Sahel, a region plagued by political instability and military coups since 2020. The junta governments have increasingly aligned with Russia, shifting away from their historical ties with former colonial power France and other regional partners.

Dismantling Lies: Report Finds Hamas Used Inflated Gaza Death Figures That Included Natural Deaths and Cancer to Stoke Anti-Israel Sentiments

While pro-terror cheerleaders screeched on college campuses and flooded streets around the world, they used death figures in Gaza, provided by Hamas, to justify their anti-semitism.

According to a new report from the Henry Jackson Society, unsurprisingly, the figures from Gaza used by the terrorists to justify their ongoing terror were inflated to include natural deaths and deaths from cancer.

The report also notes that the numbers falsely listed men as women and registered adults as children in an apparent attempt to garner sympathy.

In his report, Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza,  Andrew Fox noted the disturbing findings coming from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, used to gaslight the world.

Men listed as women to inflate female fatalities. Analysis of Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) fatality data reveals repeated instances of men being misclassified as women. Examples include individuals with male first names (e.g. Mohammed) being recorded as female. This misclassification contributes to the narrative that civilian populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of the conflict, potentially influencing international sentiment and media coverage.

Adults registered as children. Significant discrepancies have been uncovered where adult fatalities are reclassified as children. For instance, an individual aged 22 was listed as a four year-old and a 31-year-old was listed as an infant. Such distortions inflate the number of child casualties, which is emotionally impactful and heavily emphasised in global reporting. These misrepresentations suggest a deliberate attempt to frame the conflict as disproportionately affecting children, undermining the credibility of the fatality data.

Disproportionate deaths of fighting-age men. Data analysis indicates that most fatalities are men aged 15–45, contradicting claims that civilian populations are being disproportionately targeted. This age demographic aligns closely with the expected profile of combatants, further supported by spikes in deaths of men reported by family sources rather than hospitals. This evidence suggests that many fatalities classified as civilian may be combatants, a distinction omitted from official reporting.

Inclusion of natural deaths in reporting.Despite the typical annual rate of 5,000 natural deaths in Gaza, the fatality data provides no accounting for such figures. This omission raises concerns that natural deaths, as well as deaths caused by internal violence or misfired rockets, are being included in war-related fatality counts. Instances of cancer patients, previously registered for treatment, appearing on war fatality lists further support this assertion. Such practices inflate the reported civilian death toll, complicating accurate assessments of the conflict’s impact.

Media underreporting of combatant deaths. Analysis of media coverage reveals that only 3% of news stories reference combatant deaths, with outlets like the BBC, CNN, Reuters and The New York Times primarily relying on Gaza Ministry of Health figures. These figures often lack verification and fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians. The omission creates a skewed narrative that portrays all casualties as civilian, thus shaping public opinion and international policy based on incomplete or manipulated data. For example, more than 17,000 Hamas combatants are estimated to have been killed, yet these figures are largely excluded from global reporting.

The legacy media has little interest in reporting the truth. Unsurprisingly, the report finds reporting on Gazan deaths is no different.

In a survey of media organizations, 98% cited the false figures provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

A mere 5% of the surveyed media organizations cited numbers released by the Israeli authorities.

The Gateway Pundit

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine services say they destroy Russian train carrying fuel

Ukraine's SBU security service said on Sunday it had launched an operation to destroy 40 rail cars carrying fuel to Russian troops in an area of the Zaporizhzhia region Moscow holds in southern Ukraine.

The SBU told Reuters the operation involved different intelligence and military services and unfolded over a series of stages.

"The aim was to disrupt the logistical supply routes for fuel from Crimea to temporarily occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia," it said in a statement.

Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian account. Russia made no immediate comment on the reported incident.

The SBU said one of its units organised a sabotage operation that damaged a rail line as the train was moving near the village of Oleksiivka in a Russian-held part of Zaporizhzhia region.

The train was halted, with tanker cars ablaze, and army units fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS missiles at the site.

"The missiles struck the locomotive and cars at the end of the train. The enemy was unable to reach the tanks and salvage some of the fuel," the statement said.

"As a result of the special operation, the locomotive and 40 tanker cars were destroyed and an important rail line used to supply Russian troops was taken out of service for an extended period."

Russian forces control about 70% of Zaporizhzhia region and a Ukrainian military spokesperson said last month Kyiv expected Moscow to launch concerted attacks in the region soon.

Russian forces also control about 70% of neighbouring Kherson region and about 80 percent of the Donbas in the east, the main theatre of current clashes in the 33-month-old war.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine replaces commander amid Russian advance on key city

Ukraine’s military leadership has changed the commander of the Donetsk tactical group amid Russia’s continued advance toward the city of Pokrovsk in southwestern Donbass. The replacement of General Alexander Lutsenko was announced on Friday by Ukrainian MP Mariana Bezuglaya on Telegram.

Pokrovsk (also known as Krasnoarmeysk) is the largest population center under Ukrainian control in the west of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). It has gone from a major supply hub for the frontline forts to being on the front line itself.

General Alexander Tarnavsky, who participated in the “failed southern counteroffensive in 2023” will be taking his place, Bezuglaya revealed. The general commanded the Ukrainian forces operating in the city of Avdeevka when Russian forces captured it. Tarnavsky claimed the chaotic retreat of Ukrainian forces from Avdeevka was in fact going according to plan.

The co-chairman of the council on integrating Russia’s new territories, Vladimir Rogov, connected the change of commander with the difficult situation for the Ukrainian troops. “The urgent change of the commander…is symbolic, the enemy directly points to the disastrous and difficult situation on the Pokrovsk and Kurakhovo directions,” he commented, analyzing the incident for news agency RIA.

In the past 24 hours, Russian troops have liberated two villages in the DPR: Vesely Gai, located ten kilometers south of Kurakhovo, and Pushkino, 15 kilometers south of Pokrovsk. Kurakhovo is heavily fortified by Ukrainian forces and remains one of the last few major populated areas they control in southwestern Donbass. Pokrovsk is about 30 kilometers north of Kurakhovo. Last month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky referred to these areas as “the most difficult” for Ukrainian forces.

Back in November one Ukrainian commander told CNN that troops on the Pokrovsk front have been told to shoot unidentified persons on sight, fearful of Russian patrols infiltrating the sparsely held line. Another one told the outlet that only about 60 soldiers defended the key town of Selidovo when Russian forces took it last month.

Reuters/RT

A mere four years after emerging from a civil war, in 1974, Nigeria was at the beginning of an oil boom. Then, as today, the country was in the middle of a debate about fiscal federalism and revenue allocation. Unlike today, however, there were significant differences: the country was under military rule and the men leading the debate were all soldiers. In the fifty years since then, the structure of this debate and the geo-political symmetries that define it have evolved only a little.

The immediate spark for the debate fifty years ago was the publication of the statutory allocations to the twelve states of the federation for the fiscal year 1974-75. With a population of 2.5 million, Mid-West State received N139.9 million or 23.7 per cent of the allocation. Rivers State, whose population was 1.5 million, received N101.1 million.

Isawa Elaigwu, the semi-official biographer of Yakubu Gowon, the army general who was Nigeria’s military head of state at the time, observed about this that “while both Rivers and Midwestern States, comprising 7.3% (4 million) of the country’s total population, shared between themselves 40.83% (N241.00 million) of the total allocation to the states, the ten other states which accounted for 92.7% (51.6 million) of the country’s population, shared among themselves 59.17% (349.2m) of the statutory allocation.”

Usman Faruk, the commissioner of Police who governed the North-Western State was unhappy with the dissension over the sharing of the allocation because, he said, all of them in the Supreme Military Council then agreed to it. Joseph Gomwalk, another commissioner of Police and then military governor of Gowon’s own Benue-Plateau State; and Jacob Esuene, who governed the South-Eastern State, called for a more objective system of revenue allocation. If they knew what such a system looked like, they didn’t say. Kwara’s military governor, David Bamigboye, as well as General Abba Kyari of the North-East, went on record to call for a review of the allocation formula. For their part, Oluwole Rotimi and Mobolaji Johnson, military governors respectively of the Western and Lagos States, advocated for “a revenue allocation formula that would guarantee responsible and stable government for Nigeria.”

Nigeria’s search for a workable federalism in many ways can be reduced to the search for precisely such a formula. It has proved elusive. If anything, it may have gotten even more so. In the 34 years between 1946 and 1980, spanning the colonial and post-colonial periods and including military as well as elected civilian regimes, the country burnt through the reports of at least eight blue ribbon panels on the question of fiscal federalism.

On the eve of independence in 1958, the report of the Raisman Commission recommended the creation of a Distributable Pool Account (DPA) into which was to be paid 30 per cent of revenue from mineral rents and royalties, and from import duties. The regions retained 50 per cent of the revenue from mineral rents and royalties from their region, while the central government took 20 per cent. 70 per cent of the revenue from import duties went to the central government.

Six years later and four years after independence, the Binns Fiscal Commission increased the DPA share of the income from import duties from 30 per cent to 35 per cent at the expense of the share of the central government. Importantly, the report set its face against the principle of derivation, replacing it with what it called the principle of “financial comparability.” On this basis, it recommended the sharing of the DPA receipts as follows: Northern Region, 42 per cent; Eastern Region, 30 per cent; Western Region, 20 per cent; and Mid-Western Region, 8 per cent. Lagos was then the federal capital. Up to this point, the fiscal balance largely favoured the regions, which contributed resources to the central government.

In 1968, Nigeria’s post-colonial crisis of state legitimacy had already exploded into a year-old civil war. Under pressure from both the economic costs of the war, as well as its structural antecedents, Yakubu Gowon, the war-time Supreme Commander (as he was then known), called upon IO Dina, a former History lecturer at the University College Ibadan, to lead what the regime called an Interim Revenue Allocation Review Committee.

The legacy of the Dina Committee recommendations was very far-reaching and suited the regimental mood of the military. The Committee addressed frontally the issue of taxation and public goods. It recommended a centralisation of taxation, as well as the harmonisation of the produce marketing boards, which were, until then, mostly regional. The Dina Committee also recommended a centralisation of the funding of higher education and the replacement of the DPA with what it called a State Joint Account. In addition, the committee recommended that states should retain 100 per cent of rent from onshore extractive operations on the basis of derivation and also receive another 10 per cent of royalties revenue as derivation.

Even in the midst of an existential conflict at the time, the fuss that followed in the wake of the Dina Committee report was deafening. Officially, the Federal Military Government rejected the Dina Committee Report. In reality, Isawa Elaigwu recalls that “….Gowon did not raise dust over the issue but quietly implemented most aspect of this report through the back door at the appropriate time.” The result is that the Dina Committee Report has been quite influential in shaping Nigeria’s version of federalism.

Gowon enjoyed three advantages at the time in his handling of the unitarising tendencies that underpinned the recommendations of the Dina Committee. First, the civil war was an extenuating circumstance. Second, the regimental traditions of military government limited the degree of elite dissension. Third, as a military ruler, he ultimately did not have to suffer any institutional constraints similar to those imposed by a parliament or its equivalent under elected civil rule.

For the current incumbent fifty years later, a civilian seeking to accomplish what would be the most far-reaching restructuring of Nigeria’s fiscal fundamentals in 110 years, none of these advantages exists and he suffers many more debilitations besides.

By some coincidence, in the year that Gowon constituted the Dina Committee, the celebrated Kenya political scientist, Ali Mazrui, explained the challenges of structural stability in post-colonial African states in terms of two underlying crises of state legitimacy and of regime legitimacy.

Fiscal reform on the ambition evinced by the proposals now under consideration in Nigeria assumes the existence of a capable state which enjoys affinity among citizens, an overwhelming percentage of whom should be documented. None of these can be taken for granted in Nigeria. The evidence from across the fields of financial inclusion, electoral participation, and taxation suggests that the proportion of documented Nigerians does not exceed 40 per cent. It will take more than a few convenient ebullitions to address this.

Any government will be challenged in addressing it. An administration that suffers from manifest issues of legitimacy lacks the currency to trade with in this situation. The crisis that afflicts the current proposals is that of a government unwilling to put in the work required to redress deficits of state and governmental legitimacy around the country. To address what is evidently a political problem, the government has chosen instead to escape into self-inflicted technocratic gobbledygook.

Fiscal governance and reform is not as complex as the administration and its mouthpieces would like to suggest. Taxation is more than mechanical computation. It is the centrepiece of the social compact between a state and its citizens. With considered inadvertence, the administration of Bola Tinubu has done itself a world of good by inspiring these increasingly raucous debates about the state of that compact in Nigeria or the lack of it. It will be best served by listening to the debate in humility while it learns.

Nigeria has made substantial progress in repaying its International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt, paying $1.22 billion over three consecutive quarters from late 2023 to mid-2024. The payments have dramatically reduced the country's outstanding debt to the IMF.

The debt repayment breakdown shows:

- Q4 2023: $401.73 million

- Q1 2024: $409.35 million

- Q2 2024: $404.24 million

These payments have resulted in a significant reduction of Nigeria's IMF debt, dropping from $3.26 billion in June 2023 to $1.16 billion by June 2024 – a 64.42% decrease within one year.

The loan originated in April 2020 when the IMF disbursed $3.4 billion in emergency financial assistance to help Nigeria address economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and a sharp decline in oil prices. The loan was approved under the Rapid Financing Instrument with a five-year tenor and a two-year moratorium.

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) 2022 financial statements, the loan carries an interest rate of 1% per annum, with the CBN responsible for loan repayments.

President Bola Tinubu's administration is expected to pay a total of $3.19 billion to the IMF, with the previous administration likely having paid around $320 million.

The repayment schedule includes:

- 2024: $1.76 billion (principal and interest)

- 2025: $865.27 million

- 2026 and 2027: $33.99 million per year (interest only)