By Michael Chibuzo

In moments of national crisis, emotions understandably run high, as evident in the emotion-laden tirade by Erasmus Ikhide triggered by the condemnable xenophobic violence unfolding on the streets of South Africa. Nigerians are once again bearing the brunt of a raging anti-immigrant hysteria. Yet it is during such moments that public commentators must don the cap of logic and distinguish symbolism from statecraft and rage from reason.

This is where Erasmus derailed. His misguided opinion piece attempts to portray President Bola Tinubu’s diplomatic trip to France, Kenya, and Rwanda as “joyriding” while accusing the Nigerian government of silence and indifferent in the face of the xenophobic madness in a country that describes itself as a rainbow nation.

To Erasmus, the fact that President Bola Tinubu is not personally jetting into South Africa with Nigerian military, as the Giant of Africa, to quell anti-imigrant demonstrations and xenophobic attacks by South Africans across many cities against their fellow Africans, including Nigerians, means he is silent and complicit in the attacks. This is an astonishingly hollow and most mischievous assertion to put it mildly.

Let us set the records straight.

Nigeria’s diplomatic response has been swift, continuous, and coordinated.

From around mid-April when this latest wave of xenophobia reared its ugly heads in South Africa, the Nigerian government has been on its toes pulling every diplomatic lever to de-escalate the situation and ensure the safety of Nigerians living in South Africa and their livelihood.

The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigerian High Commission in Pretoria activated early-warning diplomatic engagements with the South African authorities to address the renewed xenophobia against Nigerian nationals.

As the attacks intensified, Nigeria in late April demanded through NIDCOM and official diplomatic channels four key measures from the South African government, which include:

1. Stronger security deployment in all affected communities to protect Nigerian nationals.

2. Swift arrest, prosecution, and deterrent punishment of individuals responsible for attacks, looting, and harassment.

3. Bilateral engagement between Nigeria and South Africa to coordinate on diaspora protection.

4. Clear, unequivocal public condemnation of xenophobic attacks by the South African government.

Contrary to Erasmus’ claim of indifference, President Bola Tinubu has instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to initiate voluntary repatriation for Nigerians seeking to leave South Africa, including the provision of evacuation flights. Nigeria’s High Commission in Pretoria has already begun collating the names of citizens who wish to be airlifted back home.

So, it is absolutely misleading for Erasmus to claim that the Tinubu administration is silent on the xenophobic madness in South Africa. As a matter of fact, the Acting South African Ambassador to Nigeria has been summoned by the Nigerian government and is scheduled to meet with Nigerian officials on Monday. Already, Nigeria has made it clear to the South Africans that this ongoing attacks and harassment against Nigerians risk damaging the already fragile relations between both countries. That is the wheel of diplomacy grinding and not diplomatic indifference, as Erasmus wants his audience to believe.

Next is Erasmus Ikhide’s attempt to downplay the importance of Nigeria’s presidential participation in major international forums, which he tries to dismiss as “joyriding”. This reflects his profound misreading of modern governance and statecraft.

Nigeria is part of a fluid global community with many competing spheres of influence. On the African continent, whether praised or criticised, Nigeria remains Africa’s largest population, its biggest market, and one of its most strategic geopolitical anchors. When Nigeria participates in international or continental summits, it does not attend as a tourist. It attends as a primary stakeholder. To label such participation as joyriding is to trivialize the very battles that determine whether Nigeria rises or sinks in an increasingly complex world.

In an era defined by global economic volatility which is exacerbated by Iran-Israel-U.S United tensions, the international arena is not a vacation ground, it is where nations negotiate energy security, attract investment, shape regional security frameworks, and defend their strategic interests. For a country of Nigeria’s demographic and economic weight as well strategic growth ambitions, we cannot afford to be absent from the kind of regional and international forums which President Bola Tinubu is attending on behalf of Nigeria. Doing so amounts to a forfeiture of influence.

Nigeria today, under the guidance of President Tinubu, is repositioning itself as a global energy power and stands at the threshold of a profound redefinition of its global economic relevance. The rise of large-scale industrial capacity such as the Dangote Refinery and petrochemical complex has transformed Nigeria into a new hub for refined petroleum products, with European, African and Asian buyers now turning to Nigeria for PMS, diesel, aviation fuel and petrochemicals. Dangote Refinery, heavily supported by the Nigerian government to succeed, is now the beautiful bride.

The Dangote Refinery success story is, however, just the beginning of Nigeria’s dominant positioning in the global energy landscape. Nigeria is on the cusp of unlocking massive gas opportunities too, advancing rapidly to complete major gas infrastructure projects such as the AKK pipeline and the OB3 pipeline projects, which would further unlock Nigeria’s gas utilisation and industrialisation. Beyond these two milestones, the holy grail of Nigeria’s gas revolution, the Nigeria–Morocco Gas Pipeline is nearing final investment decision (FID).

These projects elevate Nigeria as a future cornerstone of global energy security.
Forging continental partnerships to secure markets and financing is therefore very critical. The CEO Africa summit in Rwanda, one of the trips that Erasmus calls a joyride, is precisely where such continental partnerships are forged. The question is simple: With the Rwanda summit, for example, seeking to promote stronger integration among African economies, how do you discuss African integration and enterprise scaling without Nigeria in the room?

Besides energy, Nigeria is also moving at a great pace to bridge our infrastructure deficit, tackle our power supply challenges, expand agricultural mechanisation at scale, and combat insecurity. These require huge funding, most of which would be private sector financing. Ambitious projects do not advance themselves neither do financing drop from the sky, they require deft negotiation, sovereign visibility, and active diplomatic presence at the highest levels. In these rooms, Nigeria must be present or be sidelined.

It is even ironic that Erasmus complains of economic factors that fuel a “japa phenomenon” but fails to appreciate the purpose of the President’s international trips which aim to create more opportunities for Nigerians and reduce the level of outward migration by Nigerians. For example, when President Tinubu helps Dangote Refinery secure the continental market for his products, it will encourage Dangote to hasten the planned expansion of his refinery, further creating more local jobs for Nigerians. Also, if the President secures international financing for the power sector or pens defence collaboration with international partners, these would help solve the power problems and insecurity challenges that Erasmus is complaining about.

For Erasmus to frame presidential engagements abroad, which seek to expand Nigeria’s economic frontiers as “abandonment of duty” is to misunderstand the multi-layered nature of executive leadership. The wheel of governance is not linear, it is a combination of many parts working round the clock to bring about motion in governance. As the president travels, the machinery of government does not grind to a halt. MDAs and security agencies remain fully operational and responsible for responding to crises involving citizens both home and abroad with the President getting briefing round the clock and giving specific presidential directions to state officials where necessary.

No doubt, xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in South Africa or anywhere in the world, for that matter, are a tragedy that must be met with firm diplomatic action. But this diplomatic action does not begin with loud symbolism or presidential theatrics like traveling to the country of interest as Erasmus is advocating in his tirade, rather it begins with bilateral channels, consular engagement, multilateral pressure, and coordinated security dialogue. All these are actively happening currently and will intensify until the situation is brought under control.

Erasmus’s long, windy, and illogical argument basically attempts to reduce statecraft to grandstanding. Unfortunately for him, nations are not governed through emotional reflexes but through careful strategy, consistency, and presence where it matters most. Erasmus Ikhide’s article is long on rhetoric but short on fact. The tirade looks more like that of a critic who is yet to heal from the electoral loss of his presidential candidate more than three years ago.

In conclusion, Erasmus needs to be told in clear terms that the Nigerian government led by President Bola Tinubu is not indifferent to the events in South Africa neither is the President joyriding. Nigeria is responding to the xenophobic attacks diplomatically while simultaneously securing its long-term strategic, economic, and leadership interests. Two or more things can co-exist. At this moment, Nigeria can not afford absence from any table where the future of Africa, global energy, or international security is being shaped.


-Chibuzo is a public affairs analyst and wrote from Abuja

By Festus Adedayo


A commenter on X, obviously a South African national, with the name Paul, reacted to a CableNews April 27 report that two Nigerians were killed in recent spike in South Africa’s xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans. He said: “They were burnt alive…our country isn’t a playing zone. They (sic) will be more Nigerian criminals to be buried this Saturday.” Paul was writing with the handle, @blewcash.easymoney.referral, with the South African national flag hoisted on his comment. A BBC report had earlier quoted a 43-year-old Democratic Republic of Congo national living in Hillbrow, S.A. as saying he felt lucky to be alive: “My best friend was attacked one morning… He was stoned to death like a dog. Imagine someone runs away from his own land and comes here to find peace but ends up getting killed.”

A 2017 report cited by Nigeria’s House of Representatives said that 116 Nigerians were killed in South Africa over a preceding two-year period, out of which, roughly 20 were killed in 2016. Though not a recent phenomenon, xenophobic attacks in South Africa have assumed epidemic proportion. As far back as 1994, in the rush for scarce resources, immigrants face stiff push, leading to violent discrimination. Record has it that in 2008, South Africa harvested 62 deaths from xenophobic uprising and attacks. A 2018 Pew research poll reported that 62% of South Africans believed immigrants constituted social and economic burdens and were responsible for crimes. At the moment, South Africa’s rate of unemployment, ranked as one of the highest in the world, oscillates around 33%. Xenophobia attacks increased after Nelson Mandela and a black majority government deposed white rule, inflicted by assailants who allege that job losses result from foreigners’ infiltration.

Julius Malema, South African opposition politician and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, had a stinging remark against such claims. Last Thursday, at the 14th anniversary of Collen Mashawana Foundation, he took a swipe at xenophobia by saying, “I want to challenge you who say ‘Zimbabweans take your jobs, Nigerians take your jobs’ and you march, close shops, and beat up people. Tell us after doing that, how many jobs have you created?… Unskilled men, with no skill whatsoever, say somebody took their jobs. The skill they know is to drink and want to pretend like revolutionaries.”

South African politicians, like ones in uMkhonto weSizwe, (MK) led by ex-President Jacob Zuma, latch on this to make xenophobic comments to gain political advantage. Early this year, Zulu king, Misuzulu kaZwelithini, used highly derogatory term for immigrants while calling for their eviction. He spoke by the rocky Isandlwana hill, in a place where history recorded that, 147 years ago, his forefathers, commanding 20,000 Zulu warriors in the Anglo-Zulu war, defeated 1,800 British soldiers in the battle of Isandlwana.

The 51-year king said: “The kwerekwere must leave,” kwerekwere being a derogatory word for African migrants. His late father, Goodwill Zwelithini, made similar offensive call in 2015, asking immigrants to “pack their belongings”. This led to a rise in vigilante anti-migrant groups, chief of which is the Operation Dudula (Dudula in Zulu language meaning, “to be removed by force”) as well as March on March, with their notoriety flourishing daily.

There is no way we can locate South Africans’ violence against fellow blacks unless we go into history. In 2019, South Africans unleashed an unprecedented assault on Nigerians which resulted in loss of property worth billions of Naira. To understand this hate, we have to trace its genealogy. It will explain the infliction of horrendous pains on fellow blacks by South Africans.

Historically, since 1948, Black South Africans have harboured bile, violence and rancid hatred for other races. 1948 was the year Apartheid was institutionalized as a system of white minority rule. It led to acute racial segregation. The Apartheid system also forced non-white into segregated areas, restricted their rights to mingle with whites and took away their voting rights. These further inflicted incalculable damage on their psyche. The National Party, led by such leaders like Pieter Willem Botha, enforced this oppressive policy of “apartness”.

Today, though Apartheid was defeated by the collective voices of the world in 1994, it has not died. Odour of economic inequality still lingers, leaving wide social and economic disparities created by Apartheid. This includes wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, spatial segregation and unquenchable anger against anyone felt to be responsible for their existential maroon on a spot. Today, you could still see systemic poverty of blacks, carry-overs of the Frederick de Clark era, with a wide gap of unequal access to resources and education.

While you may see imposing infrastructural relics of white rule in South Africa, its innards are made of up irreconcilable dysfunction, hate and quest for vengeance of 1948 to 1994. You cannot succeed in a psychological download of the mental constitution of an average South African unless you read its books of literature. To escape Apartheid’s mind torture, Black South African writers expressed themselves in stories that were mostly laced with thematic concerns of violence, hatred, revenge and crime.

If you read the works of authors like Mazisi Kunene, Ezekiel Mphalele, Peter Abrahams, Alf Wannenburg and many others, you will understand why South Africans haven’t purged themselves of their bond with violence. In fact, if you read Can Themba’s The Dube Train, its theme is the ordinariness of death and violence under Apartheid. The narrator of the book prefaces the short story with a description of fellow commuters as “sour-smelling humanity” and exhibits his impatience with this “hostile life” and “the shoving savagery of the crowd.” With this short story, Themba explains the banality and ordinariness of death in the Apartheid era, ending the story by telling the readers that the murder of a tout, called tsotsi, “was just another incident in the morning Dube Train”, with the crowd “greedily relishing the thrilling episode.”

I have searched frantically for the lure of the gruesome murders of Nigerians and other African nationals at the drop of a hat by South Africans. My findings revealed a retained savagery of Apartheid. Placing stories of blood spillage under Apartheid with the recent ease with which South Africans hack fellow Blacks to death, a knowledge of the country’s historical development will bail you out of wonderment. If you now read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies, place the bestiality in the books beside the black-on-black hate in South Africa today and you will agree with white theorists’ submission that the Blackman has within him innate bestiality. Today, South African blacks only need very little provocation to unleash an ancestry of savagery, like Golding’s little boys marooned on an island, whose animalism took the better part of them.

Like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang, quoting Botha, Apartheid indeed brought out the beast in South Africans. Today, fellow blacks have replaced whites in their subconscious. The moment the system castrated the Blackman’s manhood, he became a lot less than an animal, with no difference between his behaviour and those of his ape ancestors. If you read the history of the South African liberation struggle, it is replete with macabre and a number of horrendous murders that would make a civilized world shudder. In the name of the struggle, many of those atrocities were excused and overlooked; indeed, they came to the world’s knowledge seldom. The world focused, on the reverse, on the evil regime of Frederick de Clark and the atrocities of segregating white from Indians, the black and coloured. The dastardly act of murdering fellow blacks they labeled Askaris, who were alleged to have betrayed the liberation struggle, were never heard. Thus, we never knew how ignoble and bloodless the hearts of our South African brothers were.

You will recall the trial of Winnie Mandela and the allegation of her involvement in the murder of some youths, who went by the façade of a football club. The murdered boys were alleged to be squealing on the liberation struggle. They were summarily tried by the “Winnie Boys”, sentenced to death and executed, similar to how a Nigerian police officer, ASP Nuhu Usman, was captured on video executing a 28-year-old suspect, Mene Ogidi, last week in Effurun, Delta State. Winnie was eventually tried for these murders which constituted one of the thousands of gruesome killings by blacks under Apartheid.

If you read some of the works of Alex la Guma, like A Walk In the Night, you will encounter District Six, the inner city of Cape Town, home to all sorts of sub-human activities and why horrendous murder became part and parcel of the people’s existence. Mutual knifing, unprovoked arson, murders and all sorts were carried out with a clinical finish that would make a decent man shudder. In Quartet and In the Fog of the Seasons’ End, you will encounter the bestiality that Apartheid wrought on the psyche of our so-called brothers. Many black South Africans lost their humanity in the process.

Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) founded by Mandela in 1961, perpetrated a lot of criminal activities and mindless murders that were swept under the rug while Mandela was in jail. Several South Africans who were accused of betraying the struggle were tagged Askari or “cockroaches” got summarily executed and nobody ever heard of their deaths thereafter.

If Gen Z South Africans who hate Nigerians this much, apparently not born in 1994 or are too young to appreciate the roles Nigeria played to get them the freedom that made them fiefs in their own land, methinks elderly South Africans should retell the story to them. After all, my people say if a child was not alive to witness history (Ìtàn) in manifestation, they will at least hear historical narratives (àróbá). In total, it is said that, from 1960 when Tafawa Balewa made Africa the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, to 1994 during Sani Abacha regime, Nigeria wasted an estimated $60 billion on funding the anti-Apartheid struggle.

That Nigerian intervention actually began with the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960. Police had opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside a police station in the township of Sharpeville. They were protesting Apartheid system’s Pass laws which required Blacks to obtain passes to move around. 72 blacks were killed and about 184 wounded in one fell swoop. In protest, Nigerian university students voluntarily skipped their lunch for a month, and the proceeds remitted to South Africa. It was called the Mandela Tax. Not only did they make fetish of the evil of Apartheid, Nigerian students mobilized public opinion in support of people they felt were their brothers, with many young Nigerians contributing from their little pocket monies in aid of the struggle.

In the same vein, many tertiary institutions formed clubs like Youth Solidarity on South Africa. Nigeria then boycotted the 1976 Olympics and 1979 Commonwealth games, leading to national losses. To get South Africa liberated quickly, Nigeria declined selling oil to the apartheid regime. Aside these, Nigeria played a vital role in the anti-apartheid struggle through music, using powerful songs to mobilize awareness and solidarity across Africa and beyond. Artists like Fela Kuti and Sonny Okosun used their voices to condemn oppression, inspire resistance, and amplify the call for freedom in South Africa.

Apart from frontline states like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia, no nation could rival Nigeria in contributions to the struggle against apartheid. If you read the book, Diplomatic Soldiering (1987) written by Gen. Joe Garba, Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister under Gens. Murtala Muhammed/Olusegun Obasanjo, you will have an idea of the quantum of fortune Nigeria sank into the liberation of South Africa and South African states. On many occasions, Nigeria single-handedly picked the bills of programmes associated with the struggle. Thousands of South African youths received scholarship to study in Nigerian universities, nursing schools, polytechnics and colleges of education. Frustrated at some point, Obasanjo, as Head of State, once threatened to deploy all means possible to fight Apartheid to a standstill, including invoking what he called the Blackman’s magical power.

At some point, Nigeria was home to South African freedom fighters like Thabo Mbeki’s father, Govan Mbeki; Albert Luthuli and other ANC leaders who were here on asylum. Nigeria also richly funded ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. Thabo, Mbeki’s son, was also on exile in Nigeria from 1976 to 1979.

On May 13, 1990, upon his release from a combination of terms in Robben Island, Pollsmoor, and Victor Verster Prisons which cumulatively stood at 27 years, President Nelson Mandela was on a courtesy visit to Nigeria. At the Murtala Square, Kaduna, he affirmed that Nigeria made the highest donation to South Africa’s liberation. To further underscore this, on April 27, on the Freedom Day which marks South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, President Cyril Ramaphosa reminded his country of the debt it owes other nations on the continent who supported their struggle against the racist system of apartheid.

The children and grandchildren of Nigerians who made those huge sacrifices are now the ones being killed in South Africa today. As Nigerians, we have our own drawbacks, but violence of the South African kind is alien to us.

My take is that, if Nigerian governments, from independence to 1994, had spent the estimated $60b frittered on South Africa on the future of Nigerians, their offspring would not be hibernating in South Africa today. South Africans may also jolly well still be in captivity. We owe it a duty to both ourselves and country to make Nigeria too a pleasant country, a country which, travelling out of it would be for mere sight-seeing, rather than for economic liberation. The hopelessness at home and the serial plunder of our country by our own kin, the notoriety of which is a tale told in all the four corners of the globe, are reasons we weigh little in the estimation of the world. Again, the criminal lifestyles, drug-pushing and excessive self-underscore that our nationals live abroad cannot but make us objects of xenophobia.

… As INEC Is Cleared Of APC Bias

By Wole Olujobi

The subterfuge is here. After a long lull in the game of trickery by election playmakers in the nation’s political chessboard, Nigeria is back again in the loop of astounding round of assorted blackmail to hector innocent fellows and the entire system into the dustbins of infamy over the offence they never committed.

In the devious game of calumny that has potential to ruin whatever bright laurels the victims might have acquired, perpetrators close their hearts to empathy, choosing instead to invent disingenous schemes wrapped in heartless lies to ruin the lives of fellow innocent human beings, including the state’s system that governs the nation’s affairs.

This noxious act in the art of politics is popular among the cyber insurgents arm of the opposition class, and it has been elevated into a norm in Nigerian politics, gaining traction in the heat of efforts by Ekiti people to get justice over the heavily rigged 2007 governorship poll between the Action Congress (AC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

In the election crisis that took three and half years to resolve in courts, a judge renowned for equity and probity, Justice Ayo Salami, was accused by PDP of secretly exchanging text messages between AC leaders and the trial judges to allegedly influence judgement in favour of AC. Salami denied the charge, insisting that his MTN telephone number must have been hacked and cloned by cyber criminals to perpetrate the fraudulent act.

Responding and rising to the occasion, the Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) set up a probe panel to investigate the matter, more so that the period was notorious for proven cases of judicial manipulations that led to the dismissal of two judges over unprofessional conducts at the Bench over election petitions cases. An instance was the Anambra case where a candidate that didn’t contest a senatorial election was declared the winner by two trial judges (names withheld). They were dismissed by NJC.

The NJC Bench hearing of the Ekiti State matter involving Salami was chaired by a senior jurist. A telecoms expert was brought from one of the nation’s security agencies to the panel to demonstrate that it was possible to clone telephone numbers of innocent people to send incriminating messages on behalf of those innocent people to other people.

At the panel hearing, the cyber security expert cloned the phone number of the panel’s chairman and used the cloned number to send a message threatening another jurist sitting next to the chairman.

Shocked and alarmed at the development, sensation rang through the room, as it became the matter of inability to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, hence the collapse of PDP’s case in the matter.

The NJC cleared Salami, who later spoke on September 19, 2013 on how his telephone number was cloned by criminals to implicate him in election petition hearing.

Salami explained his sordid experience at the presentation of a book titled ‘Nigeria Judiciary: Contemporary Issues on Administration of Justice’ as part of the ceremonies organised by the Ilorin branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA,) marking his retirement on October 15, 2013.

Salami had said: “You are all aware of the calls log issue. None of them, not a single one, showed that I ever called Tinubu, Lai Mohammed– the ACN chieftains they were referring to.

“We went to the tribunal (probe panel) with witnesses (experts) who were able to show NJC that you could use my phone in my pocket to call somebody. The expert demonstrated it at NJC. You could use my phone, which is in my pocket, to send text messages to another person. All these calls logs were fake, but we thank God we survived all the efforts to paint us black.”

It was later discovered that cyber criminals and their 419 counterparts had creamed off millions of naira from desperate politicians that lost Ekiti election but desperately needed to use any means to win the election after these criminals had sold a dummy that they had evidence of communication between Tinubu, his supporters and Justice Salami, which they could use to prosecute the alleged fraud at the tribunal to secure victory.

This happened at the time that MTN cried out on the rooftops that criminals were cloning its numbers to commit crimes.

Ekiti sordid electoral malfeasance involving INEC and judicial conspiracies threw light on the evils of electoral manipulation in Nigeria and marked the beginning of the end of the era of audacious poll robbery after the institution of the Nigerian Electoral Reform Committee constituted by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua and a review of its report headed by Senator Ken Nnamani in 2016 after President Muhammadu Buhari, himself a victim of alleged poll fraud, vowed to fight corruption in the Nigeria’s systems.

The second online fraud related to election contest was polls tracking fraud by Internet crooks who deceived Nigerians that a particular political party stood a good chance for election victory.

An instance of misleading polls tracking agencies is NOI Polls Foundation, a shadowy group behind misleading or outright fake poll tracking in Nigeria. Notorious for misleading polls tracking results ahead of elections, the poll company, which appeared to rely on fraudulent cyber manipulators and their hideous acts in 2015 presidential poll, gave President Goodluck Jonathan over 70 per cent chance above APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, and falsely predicted that Jonathan would win the entire North Central, South West and South South with Buhari winning only North East and North West and, again, later predicted that Dr Peter Obi would win the North Central in the 2023 polls to defeat other candidates.

In fact, in its opinion polls before presidential primaries in 2014, NOI had rated Buhari fourth behind Dr Goodluck Jonathan, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso and Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos, in that order, among other prospective presidential aspirants, even though Fasola never told anyone that he would contest any election.

But in the results that emerged, Buhari not only defeated Kwankwaso in APC primaries, he also went ahead to defeat Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election, thus NOI’s prediction collapsed on its promoter’s face after Jonathan had wasted his money to procure a misleading projection by cyber manipulators.

The same NOI predicted that Dr Peter Obi would win the 2023 presidential poll even though his Labour Party had neither structures, leadership and support base nor programme appeal that could sway voters’ interest in its favour. By the time Tinubu won, the losers cried blue murder, accusing INEC and its Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu, of manipulating the election in Tinubu and APC’s favour.

At every election after failure, INEC is always the scapegoat. We also saw this at the INEC collation centre when President Jonathan lost in 2015. The same is about to play out in 2027 as APC consolidates while opposition parties are in disarray over allegation of audacious usurpation of the structures of other political parties or sheer greed in political manipulations.

Today, the same characters that imported the culture of cyber fraud into the Nigeria’s political system have assembled themselves in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) housing elements with differing and questionable social values and conflicting philosophies.

In the latest gambit, ADC, a refugee camp for displaced politicians, have started to dig in, accusing the INEC Chairman, Prof Joash Amupitan, of working for APC.

The opposition party that is built on the quicksand of illegal usurpation of the structures it did not build and is ideologically divided into three groups, each in court fighting for legitimacy, had cited certain posts on X, alleging that the INEC chairman had sympathy for APC and so cannot be trusted to conduct a free and fair election, hence, calling for his resignation, which has potential to cause chaos in the election process that has already started.

The most vociferous in anti-APC scheme is former Senator Dino Melaye from Kogi State; a member of ADC and an audacious Nigerian epicure, scurrilous in nature and unabashed foppish dandy, who has no record of possessing appealing political leadership graces, but who has since been boasting that he will defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a free and fair election even though in the last governorship election in which he participated, he scored a miserable 46,362 votes while his counterpart, a neophyte Usman Ododo of APC, scored 446, 237 votes.

Earlier, the serving House of Representatives member representing Kabba-Bunu/Ijumu Federal Constituency, new-comer Tajudeen Yusuf, had roundly defeated Dino Melaye in the re-run election to pick the Kogi West Senatorial ticket on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

His rejection in his native constituency is not without basis. This is a former Senator whose projects commissioning scheme in his entire political life is all about flaunting the assortment of Hollywood posh and customised cars among his poverty-stricken people in the expansive and exclusive compound that receives neither his constituents nor immediate and extended family members. With nothing to write home about in popularity among his people, the proclivity will be to blame INEC for conducting “fraudulent” poll if he loses in election to any opponent.

This opportunistic and crass manipulation of the electorate represents a classic case of unconscionable tricks by carpet baggers in Nigerian politics to cause chaos in the election they never have any chance of winning.

But the facts emerging have proven conclusively that subterfuge is being deployed by fraudulent and flippant politicians to cause chaos after election because they do not have what it takes to defeat APC in the next rounds of elections, hence they must discredit INEC to cause national chaos.

In the latest forensic probe of the opposition’s allegation against INEC, it has been discovered that cyber criminals working for these opposition elements are behind the fraudulent scheme to mislead Nigerians into believing that INEC is working for APC.

The forensic investigation of the allegation against INEC chairman discovered a systemic fraud scheme perpetrated by cyber insurgents working for the opposition. The report found that the online uproar triggered by viral screenshots suggesting the INEC chairman operated an X handle (@joashamupitan) and posted a partisan message, “Victory is sure,” in reply to another user was a fluke.

Forensic specialists using X platform analytics, OSINT techniques, internet archive data and timestamp verification, in their investigations have concluded that Prof. Amupitan does not operate any personal X account.

A key part of the report explained: “The X account attributed to Prof. Amupitan is a clear case of impersonation. All alleged posts, replies or statements linked to him, are fraudulent and unverifiable.”

According to the report, the analysis showed that the account in question was created in September 2022 but had no connection to the professor’s verified email addresses or official institutional contacts.

The report added that the major inconsistency highlighted in the report involved the timing of the alleged post, explaining that the
alleged reply ‘Victory is sure’ was posted 13 minutes before the original post it responded to, which is “physically impossible on any digital platform”.

Investigators further established that the reply could not be found on the live X platform or in archived records, noting: “The reply has never existed on X. It is absent from both live threads and historical records.”

Curiously, the leader of the party promoting this desperate subterfuge is an accomplished coup plotter, who has no pro-people records. He once vowed to shoot a President-elect in the head if announced as winner by INEC. He had earlier while he was Communications Minister declared himself as Nigeria’s public enemy Number One by saying that telephone was not for poor Nigerians at the time the rural Cotonou banana sellers were using mobile phones.

Today, his party is out to savage the burgeoning system that holds promise for the survival of democracy, and, indeed, the nation after years of gruelling attempts at instituting a working system to make democracy thrive like in the successful democracies around the world.

The Ekiti State they want to use as a test case to sabotage democracy has Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji that is strong on performance, noble in character and pro-people in orientation, which easily attracts the trust of Ekiti people, including a large chunk of the opposition leaders. Oyebanji is being supported by the masses of Ekiti people to carry the banner of Ekiti salvation mission to the June 20 governorship election and he is backed by the various segments of the society in a one-on-one community-based campaign strategy to reach every home in campaign trail ahead of the June 20 poll.

In the days ahead, the usurpers will devise various schemes for elaborate plots to discredit the oncoming governorship poll in which Oyebanji is set for a resounding victory. But Nigerians, and, indeed, Ekiti people, already understand the tricks.

Ekiti people’s mission is clear. The verdict is here. Ekiti voters have made their choice. No anti-people scheme or INEC’s blackmail can sway Ekiti people from the route they have chosen in their support for the APC’s Oyebanji to lead them to the promised land.

* Olujobi is Deputy Director 1, Directorate of Media and Communications, Ekiti State 2026 Governorship Campaign Council