Feature/OPED
The Resurrection of Corpsocracy
By Femi Fani-Kayode
The day before yesterday, we were told by the First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari, that her husband was not as ill as most of us believed and that despite his obvious challenges he has continued to “carry out his responsibilities”.
On the same day, the media went to great lengths to convince us, without providing any pictures, that the President had resumed work and that he had had a series of fruitful and productive meetings with his Minister of Justice and the Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) respectively.
They assured us that he would definitely preside over the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting which was scheduled to hold the following day.
All of these assertions proved to be false. Buhari has now missed his FOURTH Federal Executive Council meeting in a row due to his chronic and debilitating ill health.
Whoever is holding this poor, frail, sick and elderly man to ransom and keeping him in the Presidential Villa, probably against his will, is wicked and ungodly and he or she is committing a grave sin against God and the Nigerian people.
It is clear that the President is no longer fit to govern. It is obvious that his time is almost up. It is self-evident that for him the bell is tolling.
It is incontrovertible that those around him have held him captive and are indulging in what I once described in an essay that I wrote seven years during the last days of President Umaru Yar’adua as “corpsocracy”. The essay was titled ”Corpocracy: A Gift From Umaru To The Modern World”.
Simply put corpsocracy means the rulership of the living by the dead. It is the art of hiding a walking corpse, a comatose zombie or what some have described as the “living dead” in a cupboard in the Presidential Villa, telling the world that it is hale and hearty and then ruling and running the country in its name.
This is what happened during Yar’adua’s last four months on earth whilst he still had one foot in the land of the living and it is happening to Buhari today.
Such was the ruthless and cold-blooded deception that Yar’adua’s inner circle brought into the equation that they managed to convince the Nigerian people and indeed the entire world that a President that was totally comatose and literally brain-dead managed to sign the 2010 budget all the way from dream-land.
They also managed to conjure up a fake but convincing telephone interview with the BBC television service which millions of unsuspecting viewers, including yours truly, watched and listened to from all over the world.
Such was the angst of the management of the BBC when the truth was unearthed and they finally discovered that they had been misled, conned, duped and used that the northern Nigerian woman that organised the so-called “interview”, passing off Yar’adua’s brother’s voice as Yar’adua himself, was expeditiously and unceremoniously sacked.
Her name was Jamilah Tangaza and she was the head of the BBC Hausa service at the time. She was also a double agent of both the MI6, the United Kingdom’s secretive international spy agency and Nigeria’s external spy agency known as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). One is constrained to ask: what have the Nigerian people not been subjected to or seen?
All these dirty games conducted in a squalid and sordid attempt to hold on to power at all costs. Yet worse of all are the nauseating mendacities that the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, keeps churning out. Yesterday he told us that Buhari did not attend the FEC meeting this week because he was “still resting”.
Equally amusing was the absurd assertion from the Minister of Transport, the pot-bellied creek-Haramite known as Rotimi Amaechi, who claims that he “is not corrupt” and that he “does not like money” and who told Nigerians that Buhari was now “putting on weight”, was “much better” and that he was “fit enough to run for the Presidency in 2019”.
Honestly one wonders if these creatures have any genuine love and compassion for their principal because if they did instead of telling us lies about his medical condition they would simply get on their knees and beg him to resign.
One wonders if they have any shame. It is very clear to me that they are all under an accursed hex or Luciferean spell. They have been bound and blinded in body, spirit and soul.
This is a classic case of the Living God hardening Pharaoh’s heart unto destruction. Yet sadly those in power, including Buhari himself, are so obsessed with that power that they cannot see it.
Instead of letting God’s people go and bringing to an end the wickedness, persecution, slaughter and destruction of their perceived enemies, the Buhari administration has gone into full throttle and unleashed even more havoc on members of the opposition and those that they hate.
A few examples will suffice.
A couple of weeks ago when my younger brother Mr Deji Adeyanju, the stormy petrel of Nigerian political activism, together with his equally dynamic colleague Mr Ariyo Dare Atoye, organised protest marches across the country demanding for the release of the great Biafran leader and irrepressible Igbo nationalist Prince Nnamdi Kanu, they were both promptly arrested and briefly detained by the police.
The same thing happened to them again in Abuja a few days later after they organised yet another demonstration, this time calling for the release of two online bloggers and journalists, Mr Austin Okai and Miss Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo.
It didn’t stop there. Two days ago, the Southern Kaduna’s Peoples Union (SOKAPU) went on a march in Unity Square, Abuja protesting about the continued mass murder, genocide, butchering and ethnic cleansing of their Christian brothers and sisters and people by Buhari’s kinsmen, the Fulani militias and herdsmen.
Amongst their ranks was the courageous, refreshing, young, articulate, brilliant and bright rising star of Nigeria’s Middle Belt zone, Miss Ndi Kato.
Sadly, instead of being treated with sensitivity and compassion and being given assurances that the killings would stop and the killers would be brought to justice, they were insulted, beaten, brutalised and dispersed with batons and tear gas by the Nigerian police.
When elements of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group led by Mrs Aisha Yesufu joined them as a mark of solidarity, they were brutalised and dispersed as well.
Worse still Aliyu Babangida, the former Governor of Niger State, Sule Lamido, the former Governor of Jigawa state, Ibrahim El Zak Zaky, the leader of Nigeria’s Shiite Muslims, Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Advisor to President Goodluck Jonathan and countless other opposition leaders and opponents of the government remain languishing in detention cells and prisons all over the country whilst plans are afoot to frame up and arrest numerous others like the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.
This is clearly a government and a President of “no going back”. Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth they are “so far steeped in blood that should they wade no more, returning would be as tedious as to go over”.
Yet the price for their chosen path, their sheer cruelty and callousness and their sanguine disposition is very high.
It is not just a matter of Buhari possibly dying in office as a consequence of whatever it is that has afflicted him but also what the aftermath of his death will bring.
Baba Bisi Akande, a leading member of the APC and one of the most revered and credible figures in the country, has already fired a warning shot on behalf of the Vice President and the south-west by saying that nobody should mistake 2017 for 1993.
For those that are too young to know what he is saying is that if Buhari dies, no-one should dream of scuttling Professor Yemi Osinbajo’s succession and thereby deprive the south-west of the Presidency like they did in 1993 when Chief MKO Abiola’s mandate was annulled by the northern military simply because they did not want a southern President.
This is a timely and useful intervention by Baba Akande but sadly it has fallen on deaf ears. The cabal and the ultra-conservative core north (which is the constituency that Buhari represents) has already made up its mind.
As a matter of fact, the spokesman of the Northern Patriotic Assembly issued a prompt response to him yesterday and warned him and other “leaders from the south-west” to desist from making what they described as “such immoral and despicable statements”.
Again at the instance of the northern elders and leaders, the APC Youth Wing issued an even sterner warning and advised Akande to “go for a psychiatric test” for suggesting that the ill health of the President was taking its toll on the nation.
As far as these people are concerned, the Presidency of Nigeria belongs to the north and whether Buhari lives or dies, it must stay there.
Worse still their view is that if they cannot have it then nobody will. That is the beastly mindset of those that we are contending with. And those that suffer from it will certainly come to an equally beastly end.
The truth is that President Muhammadu Buhari, his evil administration and those that they represent are venal and malevolent. They have been rejected by the Living God.
His is a government of compulsive liars, sadistic tyrants, blood-thirsty psychopaths, closet kleptomaniacs, ethnic supremacists, radical Islamists, skull and bone diviners and voodoo merchants.
The fact of the matter is that whether they like it or not we are entering the end game. Everything is coming to a head. The next few months will be instructive and critical and much will happen that will surprise and shock the world and the Nigerian people.
To the spiritually sensitive and discerning one thing is clear: this dispensation is almost over. The beast is dying. The flesh is rotting. The vultures are gathering. The sky has turned black and a new era approaches.
Yet even in sickness, death and decay the tyrant and his followers revel in deception, treachery, doublespeak, blood-lust and wickedness.
My advice to them is to humble themselves and FEAR GOD before it is too late!
My counsel to them is to let this sick and elderly man resign in peace and allow him to go home to take care of his health and make his peace with God.
My appeal to them is to be sensitive to the Spirit and to recognise the fact that he has been struck and mortally wounded by the sword of the Lord.
My prayer to them is to accept the fact that he has been pierced with the arrow of God, he has been hit by the east wind of destruction, he has been afflicted with a deep spiritual wound and he is suffering from God’s judgement: it is time for him to GO!
Feature/OPED
The Future of Payments: Key Trends to Watch in 2025
By Luke Kyohere
The global payments landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation. New technologies coupled with the rising demand for seamless, secure, and efficient transactions has spurred on an exciting new era of innovation and growth. With 2025 fast approaching, here are important trends that will shape the future of payments:
1. The rise of real-time payments
Until recently, real-time payments have been used in Africa for cross-border mobile money payments, but less so for traditional payments. We are seeing companies like Mastercard investing in this area, as well as central banks in Africa putting focus on this.
2. Cashless payments will increase
In 2025, we will see the continued acceleration of cashless payments across Africa. B2B payments in particular will also increase. Digital payments began between individuals but are now becoming commonplace for larger corporate transactions.
3. Digital currency will hit mainstream
In the cryptocurrency space, we will see an increase in the use of stablecoins like United States Digital Currency (USDC) and Tether (USDT) which are linked to US dollars. These will come to replace traditional cryptocurrencies as their price point is more stable. This year, many countries will begin preparing for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), government-backed digital currencies which use blockchain.
The increased uptake of digital currencies reflects the maturity of distributed ledger technology and improved API availability.
4. Increased government oversight
As adoption of digital currencies will increase, governments will also put more focus into monitoring these flows. In particular, this will centre on companies and banks rather than individuals. The goal of this will be to control and occasionally curb runaway foreign exchange (FX) rates.
5. Business leaders buy into AI technology
In 2025, we will see many business leaders buying into AI through respected providers relying on well-researched platforms and huge data sets. Most companies don’t have the budget to invest in their own research and development in AI, so many are now opting to ‘buy’ into the technology rather than ‘build’ it themselves. Moreover, many businesses are concerned about the risks associated with data ownership and accuracy so buying software is another way to avoid this risk.
6. Continued AI Adoption in Payments
In payments, the proliferation of AI will continue to improve user experience and increase security. To detect fraud, AI is used to track patterns and payment flows in real-time. If unusual activity is detected, the technology can be used to flag or even block payments which may be fraudulent.
When it comes to user experience, we will also see AI being used to improve the interface design of payment platforms. The technology will also increasingly be used for translation for international payment platforms.
7. Rise of Super Apps
To get more from their platforms, mobile network operators are building comprehensive service platforms, integrating multiple payment experiences into a single app. This reflects the shift of many users moving from text-based services to mobile apps. Rather than offering a single service, super apps are packing many other services into a single app. For example, apps which may have previously been used primarily for lending, now have options for saving and paying bills.
8. Business strategy shift
Recent major technological changes will force business leaders to focus on much shorter prediction and reaction cycles. Because the rate of change has been unprecedented in the past year, this will force decision-makers to adapt quickly, be decisive and nimble.
As the payments space evolves, businesses, banks, and governments must continually embrace innovation, collaboration, and prioritise customer needs. These efforts build a more inclusive, secure, and efficient payment system that supports local to global economic growth – enabling true financial inclusion across borders.
Luke Kyohere is the Group Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Onafriq
Feature/OPED
Ghana’s Democratic Triumph: A Call to Action for Nigeria’s 2027 Elections
In a heartfelt statement released today, the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) has extended its warmest congratulations to Ghana’s President-Elect, emphasizing the importance of learning from Ghana’s recent electoral success as Nigeria gears up for its 2027 general elections.
In a statement signed by its Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Comrade James Ezema, the CNPP highlighted the need for Nigeria to reclaim its status as a leader in democratic governance in Africa.
“The recent victory of Ghana’s President-Elect is a testament to the maturity and resilience of Ghana’s democracy,” the CNPP stated. “As we celebrate this achievement, we must reflect on the lessons that Nigeria can learn from our West African neighbour.”
The CNPP’s message underscored the significance of free, fair, and credible elections, a standard that Ghana has set and one that Nigeria has previously achieved under former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. “It is high time for Nigeria to reclaim its position as a beacon of democracy in Africa,” the CNPP asserted, calling for a renewed commitment to the electoral process.
Central to CNPP’s message is the insistence that “the will of the people must be supreme in Nigeria’s electoral processes.” The umbrella body of all registered political parties and political associations in Nigeria CNPP emphasized the necessity of an electoral system that genuinely reflects the wishes of the Nigerian populace. “We must strive to create an environment where elections are free from manipulation, violence, and intimidation,” the CNPP urged, calling on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to take decisive action to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.
The CNPP also expressed concern over premature declarations regarding the 2027 elections, stating, “It is disheartening to note that some individuals are already announcing that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027. This kind of statement not only undermines the democratic principles that our nation holds dear but also distracts from the pressing need for the current administration to earn the trust of the electorate.”
The CNPP viewed the upcoming elections as a pivotal moment for Nigeria. “The 2027 general elections present a unique opportunity for Nigeria to reclaim its position as a leader in democratic governance in Africa,” it remarked. The body called on all stakeholders — including the executive, legislature, judiciary, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and civil society organisations — to collaborate in ensuring that elections are transparent, credible, and reflective of the will of the Nigerian people.
As the most populous African country prepares for the 2027 elections, the CNPP urged all Nigerians to remain vigilant and committed to democratic principles. “We must work together to ensure that our elections are free from violence, intimidation, and manipulation,” the statement stated, reaffirming the CNPP’s commitment to promoting a peaceful and credible electoral process.
In conclusion, the CNPP congratulated the President-Elect of Ghana and the Ghanaian people on their remarkable achievements.
“We look forward to learning from their experience and working together to strengthen democracy in our region,” the CNPP concluded.
Feature/OPED
The Need to Promote Equality, Equity and Fairness in Nigeria’s Proposed Tax Reforms
By Kenechukwu Aguolu
The proposed tax reform, involving four tax bills introduced by the Federal Government, has received significant criticism. Notably, it was rejected by the Governors’ Forum but was still forwarded to the National Assembly. Unlike the various bold economic decisions made by this government, concessions will likely need to be made on these tax reforms, which involve legislative amendments and therefore cannot be imposed by the executive. This article highlights the purposes of taxation, the qualities of a good tax system, and some of the implications of the proposed tax reforms.
One of the major purposes of taxation is to generate revenue for the government to finance its activities. A good tax system should raise sufficient revenue for the government to fund its operations, and support economic and infrastructural development. For any country to achieve meaningful progress, its tax-to-GDP ratio should be at least 15%. Currently, Nigeria’s tax-to-GDP ratio is less than 11%. The proposed tax reforms aim to increase this ratio to 18% within the next three years.
A good tax system should also promote income redistribution and equality by implementing progressive tax policies. In line with this, the proposed tax reforms favour low-income earners. For example, individuals earning less than one million naira annually are exempted from personal income tax. Additionally, essential goods and services such as food, accommodation, and transportation, which constitute a significant portion of household consumption for low- and middle-income groups, are to be exempted from VAT.
In addition to equality, a good tax system should ensure equity and fairness, a key area of contention surrounding the proposed reforms. If implemented, the amendments to the Value Added Tax could lead to a significant reduction in the federal allocation for some states; impairing their ability to finance government operations and development projects. The VAT amendments should be holistically revisited to promote fairness and national unity.
The establishment of a single agency to collect government taxes, the Nigeria Revenue Service, could reduce loopholes that have previously resulted in revenue losses, provided proper controls are put in place. It is logically easier to monitor revenue collection by one agency than by multiple agencies. However, this is not a magical solution. With automation, revenue collection can be seamless whether it is managed by one agency or several, as long as monitoring and accountability measures are implemented effectively.
The proposed tax reforms by the Federal Government are well-intentioned. However, all concerns raised by Nigerians should be looked into, and concessions should be made where necessary. Policies are more effective when they are adapted to suit the unique characteristics of a nation, rather than adopted wholesale. A good tax system should aim to raise sufficient revenue, ensure equitable income distribution, and promote equality, equity, and fairness.
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