Opinion
Beyond the Politics of Name-Calling: Time to Put Development Front and Center
By Dr. Osamhanze Akugbe Idahosa.
Nigerian politics has a familiar rhythm that repeats itself with the certainty of the rainy season. As an election approaches, the airwaves fill not with policy proposals or development blueprints, but with recycled scandals, resurrected controversies, and character assassinations dressed up as accountability. Old files are reopened. Rumours are given new life. Personalities are dissected forensically, while the economy — the very thing that determines whether ordinary Nigerians eat, work, and hope — is left to fend for itself in the background noise.
This is not new. It is, in fact, a pattern the late Professor Claude Ake diagnosed with uncomfortable precision decades ago. In his enduring body of work on how politics has underdeveloped Africa, Ake argued that the continent’s governing elites have rarely treated development as politics’ central business. Instead, politics became the prize — an unrelenting contest for power and its spoils, disconnected from any serious commitment to transforming people’s material conditions. Development was talked about, promised, and occasionally budgeted for, but it was never the organizing logic of governance. Power for its own sake was.
Nigeria, in many painful ways, has continued to prove Ake right. A country blessed with abundant human capital, fertile land, solar potential across its northern belt, gas reserves that could power industries for generations, and a youthful population bursting with energy and ambition, still finds itself struggling with basic questions of electricity, food security, and job creation. The paradox is not a mystery. It is the direct consequence of a political culture that majors on the minor and minors on the major—one where cutthroat politicking consistently displaces the harder, slower, less theatrical work of nation-building.
The Noise That Drowns Out the Signal
Every election cycle in Nigeria seems to produce its own theatre of distraction. Certificates are questioned. Personal histories are excavated. Allegations, some genuine and many manufactured for effect, are deployed not to inform the electorate but to overwhelm them. The result is a public conversation so saturated with noise that the signal — what each aspirant actually intends to do about unemployment, inflation, infrastructure decay, and industrial collapse — gets lost entirely.
This is not to say that character and integrity do not matter in leadership. They do, profoundly. But there is a difference between legitimate scrutiny of a candidate’s fitness for office and the wholesale substitution of personality warfare for policy debate. When name-calling becomes the primary currency of political engagement, it does more than distract; it actively erodes the electorate’s capacity to hold anyone accountable for economic outcomes, because the entire conversation has shifted away from outcomes altogether.
What 2027 Should Really Be About
As Nigeria edges toward the 2027 electioneering season, there is a genuine opportunity to break this cycle — but only if electorates themselves insist on it. The question voters ask of every aspirant should not primarily be “what has this person done to embarrass their opponent,” but rather “what, brick by brick, will this person do to build an economy that works?”
Brick by brick is the operative phrase, because national economic transformation is not a single grand gesture. It is the cumulative result of deliberate choices: stable macroeconomic policy that tames inflation without strangling growth; a manufacturing and agro-industrial base that converts raw endowments into finished value rather than exporting them raw; an education and skills pipeline that matches the needs of a modern economy; an investment climate credible enough to attract long-term capital rather than speculative inflows; and an energy infrastructure reliable enough to let businesses plan beyond the next generator refueling.
None of this makes for exciting soundbites. It does not trend the way a scandal trends. But it is the substance that determines whether Nigeria remains a country of enormous unrealized potential or becomes genuinely competitive within the comity of nations — able to stand alongside the economies it is so often, and so wistfully, compared to.
Change for the Sake of Change Is Not Change
The revered Benin monarch, Oba Ewuare II, recently offered a formulation that deserves wider circulation in the run-up to 2027: change should not be pursued for its own sake, but only where it promises something demonstrably better than what already exists. This is a subtle but important corrective to a political culture that often treats “change” as a self-justifying slogan, detached from any rigorous comparison of what is being offered versus what is being replaced.
Applied to Nigeria’s coming election, the royal father’s counsel suggests a discipline that both aspirants and voters would do well to adopt. Aspirants should be pressed to show, in concrete, measurable terms, how their vision improves on the present—not merely that they are different from the incumbent or from a rival. And voters should resist the seduction of change as spectacle, insisting instead on change as substance: a credible, costed, and coherent pathway to shared prosperity.
A Call to Refocus
Nigeria’s governing class, and the political ecosystem that surrounds it — commentators, party strategists, media platforms, and yes, the electorate itself — bear collective responsibility for the terms on which political contests are fought. If the 2027 cycle is allowed to descend, once again, into a contest of who can most effectively humiliate whom, the country will have squandered another opportunity to have the conversation it desperately needs: the conversation about how to convert its abundant natural and human endowments into the kind of broad-based prosperity that reduces poverty, creates jobs, and restores national dignity.
Professor Ake’s warning was never simply academic. It was a call to reorder national priorities before politics as usual consumes what remains of the country’s developmental promise. As 2027 approaches, that call deserves to be heard again — not as a lament, but as an instruction: look beyond the name-calling, beyond the personality contests, and ask instead what each aspirant will actually build.
Dr. Osamhanze Akugbe Idahosa is of the Africa Development Studies Center and writes from Abuja.
By Osamhanze Idahosa.
A peculiar kind of fear grips a ruling party when its coalition arithmetic no longer adds up, and Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress is living through it. On the surface, the story is simple: Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and, by card-carrying membership, still a leader of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, has been accused by the APC Governors’ Forum of working against President Bola Tinubu’s re-election. Underneath that surface, however, is a far more revealing story about governance, internal democracy, and the political cost of treating power as an inheritance rather than a performance review.
Let us be honest about the sequence of events. Wike joined the Tinubu government as a strategic bridge — a PDP heavyweight whose presence in the cabinet would blunt opposition unity and lend the administration a cross-party sheen. He accepted the role with an unusual and, for Nigerian politics, almost unfashionable clarity: he would serve the President loyally in office while keeping his own political house, the PDP structure in Rivers State and beyond, intact. That was never a secret arrangement. It was the deal, stated openly from day one.
What has changed is not Wike’s position. What has changed is that his hybrid arrangement, once tolerated as a curious footnote, has become politically dangerous to a specific class of APC governors — and it is worth naming why.
The Primaries Came Home to Roost
Across several states, the APC’s primary election season was less a democratic exercise than a coronation.
Sitting governors and their anointed successors cleared the field through disqualifications, last-minute substitutions, and delegate lists that read more like loyalty registers than voter rolls. Heavyweights with genuine grassroots followings — men and women who had built name recognition, delivered constituency projects, or simply outworked the anointed candidate — were shown the door. Some were persuaded to “wait their turn.” Others were not persuaded at all.
Politics abhors a vacuum, and disenchanted heavyweights do not simply retire from public life because a governor prefers someone else. They look for a vehicle. Right now, the PDP structure that Wike has kept oiled and functional — even while sitting in an APC cabinet — is the most obvious vehicle available. That is not Wike engineering a rebellion; that is Wike’s continued political relevance meeting a supply of aggrieved politicians that the APC governors themselves created.
Whose Nightmare, Exactly?
It is important to be precise about who is actually frightened, because “the APC” is not a single, undifferentiated body with one uniform interest.
The governors sounding the loudest alarm tend to fall into two overlapping categories. First, governors who cannot seek re-election and have instead positioned themselves — or their preferred proxies — for Senate seats or other offices, and who now worry that a resurgent opposition vehicle could deny them or their anointed successors a soft landing. Second, and more damning, governors and their candidates whose only real campaign asset is proximity to the President’s name, because their own tenure in office has not generated a record voters would queue up to reward.
Put simply: the governors are not afraid of Wike as a person. They fear what an alternative platform does to a race they planned to win by default. A governor with roads, schools, hospitals, and jobs to show for two terms does not lie awake worrying that a PDP structure exists in the next local government. It is the governor — or the imposed proxy — with nothing but a party logo and the President’s coattails who feels the tremor.
A Forum Resolution Is Not a Governance Plan
The APC Governors’ Forum’s response — resolving to reject any “alliance or political arrangement” that could undermine the President’s re-election or the party’s candidates — is a legitimate defensive move on paper. No party is obliged to tolerate parallel structures that split its votes. But a resolution passed in a closed-door meeting in Abuja does not, by itself, rebuild the trust that a mismanaged primary destroyed in a local ward. It does not return a disqualified aspirant’s confidence in the process. It does not convert an imposed candidate into a popular one. Institutional discipline can constrain Wike’s coalition partners at the margins; it cannot manufacture the credibility that internal democracy would have produced for free.
The Lesson, Stated Plainly
Wike’s sphere of direct political command is one state out of thirty-six. That a single minister with a one-state base can rattle an entire governors’ forum controlling more than two-thirds of the federation is not a testament to his genius alone — it is an indictment of how thinly some of these governors’ popularity is actually rooted. Politicians who open their primaries, let the ballot decide, and then spend their tenure governing rather than merely occupying office need not fear an opposition figure of any size. Their performance becomes their coalition. Their record becomes their firewall.
The APC governors’ nightmare, then, is not really Nyesom Wike. It is the mirror he has, perhaps unintentionally, held up to their own governance report cards. Until they learn that lesson, every election cycle will produce a new version of this same anxiety, regardless of which minister or opposition figure happens to be standing nearby when the aggrieved go looking for a platform.
Dr Idahosa Oshamanze is the Vice President of Africa Development Study Centre, ADSC, he wrote from Abuja.
By Osamhanze Idahosa
A peculiar kind of fear grips a ruling party when its coalition arithmetic no longer adds up, and Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress is living through it. On the surface, the story is simple: Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and, by card-carrying membership, still a leader of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, has been accused by the APC Governors’ Forum of working against President Bola Tinubu’s re-election. Underneath that surface, however, is a far more revealing story about governance, internal democracy, and the political cost of treating power as an inheritance rather than a performance review.
Let us be honest about the sequence of events. Wike joined the Tinubu government as a strategic bridge — a PDP heavyweight whose presence in the cabinet would blunt opposition unity and lend the administration a cross-party sheen. He accepted the role with an unusual and, for Nigerian politics, almost unfashionable clarity: he would serve the President loyally in office while keeping his own political house, the PDP structure in Rivers State and beyond, intact. That was never a secret arrangement. It was the deal, stated openly from day one.
What has changed is not Wike’s position. What has changed is that his hybrid arrangement, once tolerated as a curious footnote, has become politically dangerous to a specific class of APC governors — and it is worth naming why.
The Primaries Came Home to Roost
Across several states, the APC’s primary election season was less a democratic exercise than a coronation.
Sitting governors and their anointed successors cleared the field through disqualifications, last-minute substitutions, and delegate lists that read more like loyalty registers than voter rolls. Heavyweights with genuine grassroots followings — men and women who had built name recognition, delivered constituency projects, or simply outworked the anointed candidate — were shown the door. Some were persuaded to “wait their turn.” Others were not persuaded at all.
Politics abhors a vacuum, and disenchanted heavyweights do not simply retire from public life because a governor prefers someone else. They look for a vehicle. Right now, the PDP structure that Wike has kept oiled and functional — even while sitting in an APC cabinet — is the most obvious vehicle available. That is not Wike engineering a rebellion; that is Wike’s continued political relevance meeting a supply of aggrieved politicians that the APC governors themselves created.
Whose Nightmare, Exactly?
It is important to be precise about who is actually frightened, because “the APC” is not a single, undifferentiated body with one uniform interest.
The governors sounding the loudest alarm tend to fall into two overlapping categories. First, governors who cannot seek re-election and have instead positioned themselves — or their preferred proxies — for Senate seats or other offices, and who now worry that a resurgent opposition vehicle could deny them or their anointed successors a soft landing. Second, and more damning, governors and their candidates whose only real campaign asset is proximity to the President’s name, because their own tenure in office has not generated a record voters would queue up to reward.
Put simply: the governors are not afraid of Wike as a person. They fear what an alternative platform does to a race they planned to win by default. A governor with roads, schools, hospitals, and jobs to show for two terms does not lie awake worrying that a PDP structure exists in the next local government. It is the governor — or the imposed proxy — with nothing but a party logo and the President’s coattails who feels the tremor.
A Forum Resolution Is Not a Governance Plan
The APC Governors’ Forum’s response — resolving to reject any “alliance or political arrangement” that could undermine the President’s re-election or the party’s candidates — is a legitimate defensive move on paper. No party is obliged to tolerate parallel structures that split its votes. But a resolution passed in a closed-door meeting in Abuja does not, by itself, rebuild the trust that a mismanaged primary destroyed in a local ward. It does not return a disqualified aspirant’s confidence in the process. It does not convert an imposed candidate into a popular one. Institutional discipline can constrain Wike’s coalition partners at the margins; it cannot manufacture the credibility that internal democracy would have produced for free.
The Lesson, Stated Plainly
Wike’s sphere of direct political command is one state out of thirty-six. That a single minister with a one-state base can rattle an entire governors’ forum controlling more than two-thirds of the federation is not a testament to his genius alone — it is an indictment of how thinly some of these governors’ popularity is actually rooted. Politicians who open their primaries, let the ballot decide, and then spend their tenure governing rather than merely occupying office need not fear an opposition figure of any size. Their performance becomes their coalition. Their record becomes their firewall.
The APC governors’ nightmare, then, is not really Nyesom Wike. It is the mirror he has, perhaps unintentionally, held up to their own governance report cards. Until they learn that lesson, every election cycle will produce a new version of this same anxiety, regardless of which minister or opposition figure happens to be standing nearby when the aggrieved go looking for a platform.
Dr Idahosa Oshamanze is the Vice President of Africa Development Study Centre, ADSC, he wrote from Abuja.
The recent warning by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (“EFCC”) that lawyers who charge clients in foreign currencies may be prosecuted raises an important question of Nigerian law: does the charging or denomination of professional legal fees in foreign currency constitute a criminal offence, or is the matter principally one of professional and regulatory compliance?
The EFCC’s position, as publicly reported, is that charging clients in dollars is “illegal and unethical” because the Naira is Nigeria’s legal tender. The Commission reportedly disclosed that it was already handling two cases involving lawyers who allegedly charged clients in US dollars and warned that it would prosecute culpable practitioners.
The statement deserves serious consideration. Lawyers are subject to a statutory remuneration regime, the Naira is unquestionably Nigeria’s currency, and foreign-exchange transactions are regulated. Nevertheless, criminal liability cannot be founded merely upon an assertion that a practice is unethical or contrary to regulatory policy. There must be a specific written law creating the offence.
The distinction is particularly important because the National Industrial Court of Nigeria has previously considered the legality of denominating contractual entitlements in US dollars under sections 15 and 20 of the Central Bank of Nigeria Act (“CBN Act”) and rejected the proposition that those provisions, by themselves, make such denomination illegal. Adedipe v Oracle Software Nigeria Ltd therefore provides an important judicial lens through which to examine the EFCC’s recent position.
The Naira and the CBN Act
Section 15 of the CBN Act provides that the unit of currency in Nigeria is the Naira. Section 20 establishes CBN-issued currency notes as legal tender in Nigeria.
There is, however, a distinction between legal tender, denomination, and payment.
In Adedipe v Oracle Software Nigeria Ltd, the National Industrial Court considered an argument that contractual compensation denominated in US dollars was illegal by virtue of sections 15 and 20 of the CBN Act. The Court found no provision in the Act expressly declaring the denomination of a contractual obligation in foreign currency illegal.
The Court further observed that section 20(5), which criminalises refusal to accept the Naira, expressly contemplates circumstances in which other currencies may be used as a medium of exchange. It therefore concluded that section 20 concerns payment and does not, by its language, prohibit every instance of foreign-currency denomination.
This distinction is critical.
A contract may be denominated in a foreign currency while payment is made in Naira at the applicable exchange rate. That is legally different from insisting that payment must be made in foreign currency.
Consequently, the proposition that “the Naira is legal tender, therefore every agreement denominated in dollars is illegal” is too broad as a matter of statutory interpretation.
Can a CBN Circular Create a Criminal Offence?
The CBN has, at various times, issued circulars against the pricing or denomination of goods and services in foreign currency in Nigeria. Such regulatory instruments are relevant and cannot simply be ignored.
However, a fundamental constitutional principle must be borne in mind.
Section 36(12) of the Constitution provides that a person shall not be convicted of a criminal offence unless the offence is defined and its penalty prescribed in a written law.
An administrative circular cannot, by itself, create a criminal offence where the enabling statute has not done so.
This was precisely the concern expressed by the National Industrial Court in Adedipe. The Court held that the CBN circulars relied upon by the defendant had gone beyond the wording of section 20 of the CBN Act by purporting to prohibit denomination in foreign currency. It further stated that a circular could not override an Act of the National Assembly.
That reasoning is highly relevant to the EFCC’s present position.
If a lawyer is to be criminally prosecuted merely because his professional fee was stated in US dollars, the prosecution must identify the specific written law creating the offence. It would not be sufficient simply to rely upon a CBN circular or upon the general proposition that the Naira is Nigeria’s legal tender.
The Professional Position Is Different
The conclusion above does not mean that lawyers have an unrestricted right to structure their professional fees in any manner they choose.
Legal practitioners operate within a statutory professional framework.
Section 15 of the Legal Practitioners Act empowers the Legal Practitioners Remuneration Committee to regulate the remuneration of lawyers. Pursuant to that authority, the Legal Practitioners Remuneration (For Business, Legal Services and Representation) Order 2023 was made. The Order commenced on 16 May 2023 and prescribed remuneration for various categories of professional services, including consultations, legal opinions, incorporation, litigation and property transactions.
The professional rules must therefore be distinguished from the criminal law.
A lawyer who adopts a fee arrangement inconsistent with the Remuneration Order may expose himself to professional disciplinary consequences, even where the particular conduct does not amount to a criminal offence.
Thus, the more defensible proposition is that Nigerian lawyers should not routinely dollarise ordinary domestic professional fees without considering the Remuneration Order, the Rules of Professional Conduct and applicable foreign-exchange regulations.
Foreign Currency Is Not Per Se Illegal
There is also a danger in treating foreign currency itself as unlawful.
Nigeria operates a regulated foreign-exchange market and Nigerian law recognises legitimate transactions involving foreign currency. The Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act regulates foreign-exchange transactions rather than imposing an absolute prohibition upon the possession, receipt or use of foreign currency.
This is especially relevant to legal practitioners who act for:
foreign residents;
multinational corporations;
international financial institutions;
foreign investors;
non-resident Nigerians; and
clients involved in cross-border transactions or international arbitration.
It would therefore be difficult to sustain a blanket proposition that no Nigerian lawyer may ever receive a professional fee in foreign currency.
The legality of a particular transaction must depend upon its circumstances, including the identity and residence of the client, where the services are rendered, the currency in which the fee is denominated, the currency and method of payment, and the channel through which payment is received.
The EFCC’s Jurisdiction
The EFCC undoubtedly has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute economic and financial crimes within its statutory mandate. A lawyer is not immune from criminal investigation merely because he is a member of the legal profession.
But the converse is equally important: the EFCC cannot transform every professional or regulatory infraction into an EFCC offence.
If a lawyer charges an excessive professional fee, the matter may principally be one of professional regulation.
If a lawyer breaches the Remuneration Order, disciplinary consequences may arise.
If a lawyer engages in an unlawful foreign-exchange transaction, the applicable foreign-exchange legislation must be examined.
If, however, the transaction involves fraud, money laundering, concealment of criminal proceeds, forgery or another offence within the EFCC’s jurisdiction, the criminal dimension becomes clear.
The relevant question is therefore not simply whether dollars were involved. What unlawful conduct, if any, accompanied the transaction?
Lawyers and EFCC Investigations
The EFCC’s reported concern that some lawyers assist suspects in frustrating investigations also requires careful qualification.
A lawyer does not obstruct justice merely because he represents a person under investigation.
The lawful exercise of a client’s rights, including applying for bail, challenging an unlawful arrest or detention, questioning the jurisdiction of an investigating agency, or instituting fundamental-rights proceedings, is an ordinary incident of legal representation.
The position is entirely different where a lawyer knowingly fabricates evidence, procures false documents, deceives the court, destroys evidence, or otherwise participates in criminal conduct.
If allegations that lawyers have fabricated medical records for bail applications are established, such conduct would raise serious professional and potentially criminal consequences.
The proper distinction is therefore between legitimate advocacy and participation in illegality.
The EFCC’s Warning About Its Name
The Commission’s warning against lawyers invoking its name to justify excessive fees is, in principle, uncontroversial.
A lawyer is entitled to negotiate professional fees within the applicable legal and professional framework. He is not entitled, however, to falsely represent that a fee has been imposed or approved by the EFCC, the court, the CBN or another public authority.
Where such a representation is knowingly false and money is obtained on that basis, the conduct may go beyond professional misconduct and potentially disclose a criminal offence.
Conclusion
The EFCC is entitled to investigate and prosecute lawyers whose conduct constitutes economic or financial crime. It is also legitimate for the Commission and the NBA to insist upon professional integrity within the legal profession.
Nevertheless, the proposition that every lawyer who charges a client in foreign currency automatically commits an EFCC offence requires a considerably greater legal foundation.
The Naira is Nigeria’s currency and legal tender. Foreign-exchange transactions are regulated. Lawyers are subject to the Legal Practitioners Remuneration Order and the Rules of Professional Conduct.
But professional impropriety, regulatory breach and criminal liability are not synonymous.
Most significantly, Adedipe v Oracle Software Nigeria Ltd establishes that sections 15 and 20 of the CBN Act do not, in their express terms, make the mere denomination of a contractual obligation in US dollars illegal. The National Industrial Court also held that a CBN circular cannot enlarge an Act of the National Assembly or create an illegality which the statute itself does not contain.
Accordingly, the prudent position for Nigerian lawyers is to quote ordinary domestic professional fees in Naira, comply with the 2023 Remuneration Order and applicable professional rules, and exercise particular care in cross-border transactions involving foreign currency.
But where the EFCC proposes criminal prosecution, it must go further. It must identify the specific statutory offence, establish that the offence falls within its jurisdiction, and prove every essential ingredient beyond reasonable doubt.
The real legal issue, therefore, is not whether a lawyer has mentioned dollars on an invoice. It is whether the particular transaction contravenes a law that validly imposes criminal liability.
That distinction is fundamental to the rule of law.
Ridwan Imran Esq. Dip in Law, B. A English Literature, LLB(Hons), BL.
The author is a legal practitioner with a primary interest in corporate law and litigation. With a passion for legal research, writing, and advocacy, the author is dedicated to providing insightful analysis of evolving legal issues and contributing to scholarly and professional discussions on the law. The author can be reached via [email protected] or 08131077061.
Nigeria, Spain Move to Deepen Agricultural Ties, Boost Food production
Akpabio: Banking Sector Stronger, Insecurity Will Soon End
See Black Market Dollar To Naira Exchange Rate Today 18th September 2026
-
Metro12 hours agoOndo Poisonous Alcohol: Death Toll Increases To 49, Cases Spread To Neighboring Local Govt
-
Metro13 hours agoTragedy Hits OAU: Final-Year Engineering Student Dies In Suspected Suicide At Off-Campus Apartment
-
News13 hours agoFalconets Advance to quarter-finals of FIFA U-20 World Cup
-
News13 hours agoCanada Invites Senior Managers To Apply For Permanent Residence
-
Sports11 hours agoCarabao Cup Round of 16 fixtures confirmed [Full List]
-
Opinion11 hours agoWike and the APC Governors’ Nightmare