US, Israel discuss possible US-led administration for Gaza, sources say

The United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza, according to five people familiar with the matter.

The "high-level" consultations have centered around a transitional government headed by a U.S. official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarized and stabilized, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged, the sources said.

According to the discussions, which remain preliminary, there would be no fixed timeline for how long such a U.S.-led administration would last, which would depend on the situation on the ground, the five sources said.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly, compared the proposal to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that Washington established in 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The authority was perceived by many Iraqis as an occupying force and it transferred power to an interim Iraqi government in 2004 after failing to contain a growing insurgency.

Other countries would be invited to take part in the U.S.-led authority in Gaza, the sources said, without identifying which ones. They said the administration would draw on Palestinian technocrats but would exclude Islamist group Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which holds limited authority in the occupied West Bank.

Islamist group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, sparked the current war when its militants stormed into southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing another 251.

The sources said it remained unclear whether any agreement could be reached. Discussions had not progressed to the point of considering who might take on core roles, they said.

The sources did not specify which side had put forward the proposal nor provide further details of the talks.

In response to Reuters questions, a State Department spokesperson did not comment directly on whether there had been discussions with Israel about a U.S.-led provisional authority in Gaza, saying they could not speak to ongoing negotiations.

"We want peace, and the immediate release of the hostages," the spokesperson said, adding that: "The pillars of our approach remain resolute: stand with Israel, stand for peace."

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment.

In an April interview with Emirati-owned Sky News Arabia, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he believed there would be a "transitional period" after the conflict in which an international board of trustees, including "moderate Arab countries", would oversee Gaza with Palestinians operating under their guidance.

"We're not looking to control the civil life of the people in Gaza. Our sole interest in the Gaza Strip is security," he said, without naming which countries he believed would be involved. The foreign ministry did not respond to a request for further comment.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, rejected the idea of an administration led by the United States or any foreign government, saying the Palestinian people of Gaza should choose their own rulers.

The Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

RISKS

A U.S.-led provisional authority in Gaza would draw Washington deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mark its biggest Middle East intervention since the Iraq invasion.

Such a move would carry significant risks of a backlash from both allies and adversaries in the Middle East, if Washington were perceived as an occupying power in Gaza, two of the sources said.

The United Arab Emirates - which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 - has proposed to the United States and Israel that an international coalition oversee Gaza's post-war governance. Abu Dhabi conditioned its involvement on the inclusion of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and a credible path toward Palestinian statehood.

The UAE foreign ministry did not respond to questions about whether it would support a U.S.-led administration that did not include the PA.

Israel's leadership, including Netanyahu, firmly rejects any role in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority, which it accuses of being anti-Israeli. Netanyahu also opposes Palestinian sovereignty.

Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would expand its attacks in Gaza and that more Gazans would be moved "for their own safety". Israel is still seeking to recover 59 hostages being held in the enclave. Its offensive has so far killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry data.

Some members of Netanyahu's right-coalition have called publicly for what they describe as the "voluntary" mass migration of Palestinians from Gaza and for the reconstruction of Jewish settlements inside the coastal enclave.

But behind closed doors, some Israeli officials have also been weighing proposals over the future of Gaza that sources say assumes that there won't be a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza, such as the U.S.-led provisional administration.

Among those include restricting reconstruction to designated security zones, dividing the territory and establishing permanent military bases, said four sources, who include foreign diplomats and former Israeli officials briefed on the proposals.

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia’s 72-hour ‘Victory Day’ truce begins

A 72-hour ceasefire proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially come into effect, with Russian forces halting offensive operations from midnight on Thursday, despite a surge in Ukrainian drone attacks in the hours before the truce.

The pause in fighting, set to last until midnight on May 10–11, is described as a humanitarian gesture marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. The Kremlin says the ceasefire also aims to create space for direct peace talks with Ukraine, without preconditions.

”Yes, this is an initiative by the Russian side, by President Putin. It remains in force,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Wednesday, stressing that Moscow is committed to honoring the truce despite Ukraine’s record-breaking drone assault ahead of its start.

Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has refused to back the ceasefire, denouncing it as an “attempt at manipulation” and accusing Russia of using humanitarian overtures for tactical advantage.

Instead of pausing hostilities, Kiev intensified its drone campaign, with high-ranking Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik stating that Ukrainian UAV strikes over the past week caused a record number of civilian casualties — 15 killed and 142 injured.

Earlier in the week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Zelensky of engaging in “classic terrorist behavior” by threatening civilians in Russia while soliciting additional funding from Western donors.

Peskov condemned the continued attacks, accusing the “Kiev regime” of revealing “its essence and inclination toward terrorist actions.” He noted that Russian special services and the military are taking all necessary measures to ensure Victory Day events proceed safely across the country.

Despite calls from some lawmakers for an “asymmetrical” response to the drone strikes, the Kremlin has reiterated its position: “All instructions have been given, there are no new elements here,” Peskov said when asked about potential retaliation during the ceasefire window.

Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and remains one of the most significant public holidays in Russia.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

China's Xi arrives in Moscow in show of support for Putin after Ukrainian drones target capital

Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into Moscow on Wednesday for talks with President Vladimir Putin and a pomp-filled visit that Kyiv has made clear it opposes after Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow shortly before he touched down.

Xi, whose country buys more Russian oil and gas than any other, and which has thrown Moscow an economic lifeline that has helped it navigate Western sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine, landed at Moscow's Vnukovo-2 airport soon after Russian authorities said they had brought down another Ukrainian drone outside the capital.

It was the third day Ukraine has targeted Moscow with drones and one of Moscow's main airports was forced to temporarily suspend its activities less than three hours before Xi's arrival.

When asked during a news briefing about air attacks by both sides on each others' capitals, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry did not comment on Xi's trip, saying only that the "top priority" was to avoid an escalation in tensions.

The Kremlin said the attempted Ukrainian attacks on Moscow showed Kyiv's tendency to commit "acts of terrorism" and that Russia's intelligence services and military were doing everything necessary to ensure the security of upcoming World War Two commemorations which Xi is due to attend.

Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that Russia had launched its own air attack on Kyiv overnight, killing a mother and her son. Russia says it only targets military objects.

Xi is the most powerful world leader expected at a military parade on Moscow's Red Square on Friday to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany.

His visit hands President Vladimir Putin an important diplomatic boost at a time when the Russian leader is keen to show his country is not isolated on the world stage. The Kremlin has touted Xi's presence, along with that of 28 other world leaders, as a sign of Russia's growing global authority.

But Ukraine's Foreign Ministry - in comments that seemed directed at China whose troops are due to march on Red Square - on Tuesday urged countries not to send their militaries to participate in the May 9 parade, saying such participation would go against some countries' declared neutrality in the war.

DRONES TARGETED MOSCOW

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that Russian air defence units had destroyed at least 14 Ukrainian drones headed for the Russian capital overnight. He later said at least two more had been brought down during the day.

Xi has called for talks to end the war in Ukraine and has accused the U.S. of stoking the war with weapons supplies to Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has in the past urged him to try to persuade Putin to end the war.

Xi is due to hold talks with the Russian leader on Thursday and to join other world leaders for the parade on Friday.

His visit comes as U.S. President Donald Trumpis trying to push Moscow and Kyiv to find a way to end the war in Ukraine, with both sides blaming each other for a lack of progress.

Locked in a tariff war with the United States, Xi is expected to sign numerous agreements to deepen an already tight strategic partnership with Moscow, which has consistently seen China crowned Russia's biggest trading partner.

Despite recent efforts under Trump to reset U.S.-Russia ties, Putin is expected to present a united front with Xi against Washington, whose dominance and "exceptionalism" both countries have questioned, arguing for a more multipolar world.

POST-WAR INTERNATIONAL ORDER

In a signed article published by Russian media on Wednesday, Xi wrote that China and Russia must "firmly maintain the post-war international order."

"The two sides should jointly resist any attempt to disrupt and undermine China-Russia friendship and mutual trust," read the text of the article, Chinese state media reported.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the visit "one of the central events in Russian-Chinese relations this year."

"The World War Two focus is about the post-war international order and now the U.S. is dismantling or undermining it. So China and Russia will frame themselves as the defenders of the international order and the UN system, and oppose U.S. unilateralism and hegemony," said Yun Sun, a China politics analyst at the Stimson Center in Washington.

In their talks, Putin and Xi will discuss the "most sensitive" issues, including energy cooperation and the proposed but yet to be built Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline to China, Yuri Ushakov, a top Kremlin aide, said.

RT/Reuters

Since the Nigerian presidency has devoted itself to responding to every criticism of the government and its administrative failings, it is unsurprising that media aide Bayo Onanuga faulted the recent claim by the outgoing President of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, that Nigerians lived a better life in the 1960s going by the GDP per capita. Onanuga argued that Adesina should know that GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past. Indeed, it is a poor tool for assessing living standards. Its primary usefulness is in giving us the metrics to compare economic output in a country or between countries. Then he adds that today, as we await the NBS’s recalibration of our GDP, we can comfortably say without contradiction that it is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence.

What Onanuga has done here is to spill a lot of needless ink to arrive at the same spot where he started. If the GDP is not a reliable marker of economic growth and development, why still wait for a favourable NBS figure to contradict Adesina?

 In any case, the two truths that might be operating here might not be mutually contradictory. Statistics can show growth since 1960, while Nigerians qualitatively live far less than they did 60 years ago. On that score, Onanuga is right that numbers are not the only means of scaling a society’s achievements. Figures objectively calculate how an average person lives (or lived) but do not paint the full picture of the internal substance of such a life. If we want to get to the truth, we must also probe social experience. In this case, we can ask the people who lived in the 1960s what their lives were like and how their experience compares to the present.

Now this is where it gets tricky. If you line up one thousand Nigerians who have lived through the various seasons of the nation’s history and ask them if the country was better in the 1960s, I can bet that there will be far more who would agree that the country used to be better. Why is that so? First, because human memory is prone to recall the past with nostalgia, and that makes for pessimism about the conditions of the present. The human brain is wired to scan the arc of personal history and promote the positive recollections of the past over those of the immediate present. It is sometimes called the declinism bias, and it is not peculiar to Nigerians. You find the echoes of the “good old days” in the “Make America Great Again” politics where a section of United States citizens thinks the old times were better than now when by every parameter, they are a richer and stronger country.

But in the case of Nigeria, people know what they are saying when they look back wistfully at the past and declare that life used to be better. I have older friends in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Their recollection of how life used to be in Nigeria sometimes feels like the vision of the Nigeria I would love to see. If they are of the formally educated class, these folks would fondly recall the Nigeria where they received a sound education at all levels. Public schools were not as dilapidated; nobody ever recalls where students sat on the floor in their roofless classrooms. Public education was so good that the children of the elites attended the same schools as everyone else. You could be a poor village boy from rural Igbomina and attend Government College with the children of the powerful. Education was not as cheapened through private schools.

Those who made it to the university among them would recall receiving an education in the true sense of the word. Nobody needed to go to school abroad; Nigerian universities offered world-class education. They would recall a university system where the hostels were not crammed with students; the facilities worked, and undergraduates lived like actual human beings, unlike the appalling situation that subsists on most campuses. That was, of course, the generation that also had a quarter chicken for lunch on Sundays. People would also recall that fresh university graduates had jobs waiting for them after school, and you could buy a car with your salary. Whether they are educated or not, everyone can recall a time when the country was safe and secure, and one could travel through its length and breadth without fearing abduction by Fulani herdsmen. While the past might not be as picture-perfect as generally painted, there is enough substance in people’s recollections to demonstrate how much we have declined. The Nigeria some of us dream of living in has already been lived out by our forebears, imagine!

So yes, while the rebased GDP figures will expectedly look better, there is a lot of decline in the quality of our Nigerian life. Why do we even need to go as far as the 1960s to apprehend what has happened to our Nigerian lives? There are closer examples of a lack of progress. We are a country that once produced as much as 7,000MW of electricity in 2014. In 2025 and with multiple grid collapses, we struggle with 5,500MW. The Nigerian population has increased, and with it the demand for electricity, but the supply has only declined. Does anyone really need the GDP per capita to divine how a country that cannot sustain its modest gains would suffer socially and economically? An older relative once told me that the Energy Corporation of Nigeria—the company that supplied power in their youth—used to give an advance notification if there would be a power outage. Tell that to the generation of young Nigerians who have never lived in a world without the crazy hum of a generator bursting through their brains, and they would think you are lying.

Electricity is one aspect; the general state of public infrastructure is another. A generation has never witnessed a Nigeria where public utilities worked. Ask the young person living in Nigeria, where the GDP is supposedly 50 to 100 times better—a la Onanuga—if they know that we used to get water supply from a public water corporation, and they would perhaps be genuinely surprised. Look at places like our hospitals, especially the public ones, where people complement the paltry services they receive there with prayers and tell us how much better we have it. Even our leaders cannot entrust their lives to the public hospitals they fund. The slightest malady, and they are already on their way to France or the UK to receive proper healthcare.

In 2023, I visited the University College Hospital, Ibadan and what I saw there is a story best not told. Yes, the GDP must have multiplied about a hundred times since UCH was first founded in 1952, but nothing in that hospital currently reflects it. You can say the same for every aspect of our Nigerian lives. We have added many more zeroes to our national statistics, but our lives remain internally empty. Whereas countries like China and the UAE that lifted a huge percentage of their population out of poverty do not rely on media aides like Onanuga to sàlàyé progress on social media with spurious figures. Unlike our own situation, their results speak for themselves.

Punch

The Nigerian stock market maintained its bullish momentum on Tuesday, with investors recording substantial gains of ₦1.045 trillion on the Nigerian Exchange Ltd.

Market capitalization increased by 1.56% to reach ₦68.105 trillion, up from Monday's close of ₦67.060 trillion. Similarly, the All-Share Index (ASI) climbed by 1,662.60 points or 1.56%, settling at 108,361.10 from the previous day's 106,698.50.

This upward trend was fueled by strong investor interest in medium and large-cap stocks, particularly in the financial sector, including Access Corporation, Guaranty Trust Holding Company, and United Bank for Africa.

The market showed positive breadth with 42 gainers outpacing 25 losers. Among top performers, Ecobank Transnational Corporation and Northern Nigeria Flour Mills both surged by 10%, closing at ₦25.85 and ₦82.50 per share respectively. Nestlé Nigeria also gained 10% to finish at ₦1,210, while Beta Glass rose 9.98% to ₦132.80 and Austinlaz increased by 9.94% to ₦1.88 per share.

On the declining side, Guinea Insurance led with an 8.70% drop to 63 kobo, followed by DAAR Communications which fell 6.78% to 55 kobo. VFD Group decreased by 6.59% to ₦17.00, while WAPIC Insurance and Regalins shed 6.07% and 4.69%, closing at ₦2.01 and 61 kobo respectively.

Trading volume stood at 475.46 million shares valued at ₦13.899 billion across 17,575 transactions, compared to Monday's 569.041 million shares worth ₦18.934 billion in 18,612 deals.

Access Corporation dominated trading activity with 103.92 million shares worth ₦2.2 billion, followed by Guaranty Trust Holding Company with 37.99 million shares valued at ₦2.422 billion. United Bank for Africa, Sterling Bank Nigeria, and Zenith Bank rounded out the top five most actively traded stocks with transactions worth ₦1.04 billion, ₦147.24 million, and ₦1.234 billion respectively.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Nigeria has approved a $652-million China Exim Bank funding package for construction of a road to move goods from a sea port and petroleum refinery on the edge of its main city Lagos to its southern states, the public works minister said.

The financing was approved by the federal executive council chaired by President Bola Tinubu on Monday, David Umahi said in a statement.

The road will be an evacuation corridor from the Lekki Deep Sea Port, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery - Africa's biggest with refining capacity of 650,000 barrels per day - and its adjoining fertiliser plant to at least a dozen southern states.

China has been providing billions of dollars in funding for power, rail and road projects in Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation and Africa's biggest oil producer.

Nigeria's debt to China - its largest bilateral creditor - stands at over $5 billion, the most recent data from the country's Debt Management Office showed.

Reuters

Israel hits Yemen's main airport in airstrike against Houthis

The Israeli military carried out an airstrike on Yemen's main airport in Sanaa on Tuesday, its second attack in two days on Iran-aligned Houthi rebels after a surge in tensions between the group and Israel.

Three people were killed in the strike, according to Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV.

Israel warned people to leave the area around Sanaa International Airport before Tuesday's attack, which it said targeted Houthi infrastructure and "fully disabled the airport". Witnesses later reported four strikes in the capital.

Tensions have been high since the Gaza warbegan, but have risen further since a Houthi missile landed near Israel's Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, prompting Israeli airstrikes on Yemen's Hodeidah port on Monday.

"A short while ago, IDF (Israel Defence Forces) fighter jets struck and dismantled Houthi terrorist infrastructure at the main airport in Sanaa, fully disabling the airport," the Israeli military said.

"The strike was carried out in response to the attack launched by the Houthi terrorist regime against Ben Gurion Airport. Flight runways, aircraft, and infrastructure at the airport were struck."

Three airport sources told Reuters that the strikes targeted three civilian airplanes, the departures hall, the airport runway and a military air base under Houthi control.

The Israeli military said the airport had been "a central hub for the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer weapons and operatives."

In a statement carried by al-Masirah, the Houthis said:

"The operations of our armed forces will continue and the support by Yemen to Palestine will only end with the end of the aggression and siege against Gaza."

The United Nations Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg said on X that the latest hostilities "mark a grave escalation in an already fragile and volatile regional context".

An official at Yemen's flag carrier Yemenia Airways told Reuters that three of its aircraft were destroyed according to an initial assessment.

'AXIS OF RESISTANCE'

The Houthis have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea since Israel began its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza after the Palestinian militant group's deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Houthis say they are doing so in solidarity with the Palestinians and have pressed on with attacks in response to Israel expanding its military operations in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis said on Sunday they would impose a "comprehensive" aerial blockade on Israel by repeatedly targeting its airports.

Sixty percent of Yemenis live under the control of the Houthis, a resilient group that withstood years of Saudi-led bombing during the country's devastating civil war.

The Houthis are part of Iran's "Axis of Resistance" against Israeli and U.S. interests in the Middle East, which also includes Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

While Israel has weakened those groups by assassinating top leaders and destroying military infrastructure since the Gaza war began, the Houthis are still a force to be reckoned with.

The Israeli strikes around Hodeidah on Monday killed four people and wounded 39, the Houthi-run health ministry said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to retaliate after the missile launched by the Houthis landed near Ben Gurion Airport and led to European and U.S. airlines cancelling flights.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia launches missile attack on Kyiv, mayor says

Ukraine's air defence units were trying repel a missile attack on Kyiv, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said early on Wednesday after a series of explosions shook the city.

Reuters' witnesses said they heard a series of loud blasts soon after 1 a.m. local time.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia has returned 205 servicemen from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime, in return handing over 205 Ukrainian prisoners of war, the Defense Ministry reported.

"On May 6, 2025, as a result of negotiations, 205 Russian servicemen were returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime. In return, 205 Ukrainian prisoners of war were handed over," the statement said.

According to the ministry, the UAE provided mediation efforts to ensure the return of the Russian servicemen.

Reuters/Tass

Maybe the greatest problem in Nigeria today is the way in which the nation has lost its moral compass, and with it, civic culture. When our youth look at our leaders, they see clearly that there is no good example to copy. Yes, they see what is today called success. The bad guys are very successful. Success is here reduced to its most crass elements, they have stolen massive amounts of money from the treasury and can drink the most expansive whiskies and champagnes, travel round the world and move in convoys of dozens of cars although sadly for that successful Nigerian, he or she can only travel in one car at a time. I read the society pages in the press and this week, there are stories of how a “big boy” has spent hundreds of millions of naira on a party for his latest girlfriend. And as my readers know, Nigeria is indeed the most “religious” country in the world in competition with number two, Afghanistan. It is religion without God, values, love for the other and morality. They know not God because they are too deep into the worship of mammon. They have lacked the philosophical depth to understand the philosopher of our time: “Some people are so poor that all they have is money” Bob Marley.

Governance therefore has been turned in a mad rush to empty the treasury for private use. This means the core business of governance has disappeared for decades and the outcome has been a State that does not do its work. As I have repeated so many times in this column, the Nigerian state is undergoing a three-dimensional crisis. The first one affects the political economy and it is generated mainly by public corruption over the past four decades that has created a run on the treasury at the national and state levels, threatening to consume the goose that lays the golden egg. The second one is the crisis of citizenship symbolised by ethno-regional and ethno-religious crisis generating violent conflicts including the Boko Haram insurgency, farmer-herder killings, widespread bandit-terrorism, agitations for Biafra, militancy in the Niger Delta and indigene/settler conflicts. The third element relates to the frustration of the country’s democratic aspirations in a context in which the citizenry believes in “true democracy” but is confronted with a reckless political class that is corrupt, self-serving and manipulative to ensure electoral outcomes often do not reflect the choice of the people.

These challenges have largely broken the social pact between citizens and the state. That is why today, Nigerians find themselves in a moment of doubt about their nationhood. It is similar to the two earlier moments of doubt we have experienced, 1962-1970 when we went through a terrible civil war and the early 1990s when prolonged military rule created another round of challenges to the National Project. We survived those two moments but there is no guarantee that we shall survive the third. Nonetheless, there is a possibility that the current crisis as an opportunity to surge forward in fixing Nigeria.

Our national duty is to get our leaders to listen to Bob Marley: “The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.” This is one of the deepest insights on the purpose of leadership and governance. Will they listen, no, so engage plan b.

Every day, we discuss in homes, offices, bars, religious gatherings, the mass media, social media, professional associations and all other fora in Nigeria today that there is a real and imminent threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria. In addition, there is an on-going rapid slide into anarchy, precipitated by the most serious collapse in security provisioning in our country, which is confronted by an almost complete lack of leadership or governance response to a multipronged crisis. Maybe our leaders are too far gone to be saved as suggested by our leading poet, Niyi Osundare, while describing the judiciary which was once a pillar of justice and integrity. Some excerpts below:

“My Lord, Tell me Where to Keep your Bribe?”

Do I drop it in your venerable chambers

Or carry the heavy booty to your immaculate mansion

Shall I bury it in the capacious water tank

In your well laundered backyard

Or will it breathe better in the septic tank

Since money can deodorise the smelliest crime

My Lord
Tell me where to keep your bribe?
The “last hope of the common man”
Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich
A terrible plague bestrides the land
Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers”

Increasingly, scholars are describing the Nigerian State as a failed one. My position is that it is teleological to describe the state as having failed because it is never about the end game, it is always about on-going processes of construction and deconstruction and above all, the direction of movement. The same Ghana that was once described as the clearest example of a failed state in Africa is today being described as the opposite. I fall into the category of believers in the Nigeria project and I track the evolution of the Nigerian state to see how we can pull back from the brink. If you seek evidence of failure you find it and if you seek evidence about the resilient Nigerian state you will find it. The Bible says, “seek and you shall find”. Our evil ruling class remain in power and destroy our country because they have found ways to rig elections, increasingly through the judiciary and stay on. We can stop them if we plan and organise well. My message to Nigerians is that it is not too late to save the country. Concerted citizen action can create the basis for offering Nigeria a new lease of life, provided proactive measures are taken to redress the crisis. Democracies persist and grow because they have citizens who have agency and use it to exercise their power.

Our greatest fear today should therefore be that of a self-fulfilling prophesy. The major outcome of the crisis facing the country has been the erosion of public trust. A toxic atmosphere has developed in which different actors are suspected of developing plots to destroy others. Actions of whatever type, as well as non-action or late action by governments and institutions are no longer taken at face value but are re-interpreted within narratives of coordinated plots by some groups to destroy or eliminate others or to take their land. There is no effective counter-narrative to create hope. The other challenge is negative agency. With over half the country living in extreme poverty, a generation of young Nigerians has emerged with nothing to lose but their poverty. They are procuring arms and engaging in violence, banditry and insurrectional acts to mimic the rich ruling class, thereby precipitating the march towards anarchy.