Saturday Southerner — Another View
Saturday, May 9, 2026

Senate President Godswill Obot Akpabio will go down in history as one of the the worst to have presided over the National Assembly. He is no doubt a man whose interest does not include to salvage Nigeria.

For all he cares, Nigeria can continue to be in debt, the citizens can keep dying, and their future damned. He is not troubled. After all, he and his family enjoy the perks of the office. They are protected by armed security agents.

In contrast, the blood of Nigerians can be seen flowing everywhere. And this does not seem to matter to the country’s No 3 Cutizen.

Certainly, no country in the world deserves this kind of Senate leadership. The National Assembly led by Senator Akpabio is a lame duck, a national disaster. Definitely President Ahmed Bola Tinubu since inception of his administration in 2023 has had our lawmakers in his pocket. He has refused to govern the country as expected but has continued the regime of borrowing to fund economic reforms.

But Nigerians keep asking: where and how has the government spent the subsidy windfall, revenue from tax, VAT, IGR, Customs, recovery of looted funds, etc?

Sadly, the NASS led by Akpabio has not raised eyebrows. The country may as well be buried in debts. The consequence is that President Tinubu has enslaved present day Nigerians and future generations to come. This is pure cluelessness, a mark of incompetence and rascality. A calculated extortion of the already drained citizens.

The continuous borrowing by Mr. President is irritating and can also be considered irrational.

No wonder some civil rights activists have dubbed the borrowings as “borrow and steal.” There is nothing fundamentally demanding that, the government has done with the borrowed money since it came to power.

The recent borrowing of another $516m by Mr. President to fund the Sokoto–Badagry Super Highway project has been dubbed “another conduit pipe.”

And for the President of the Senate to have accelerated its approval, congratulated President Tinubu by saying; “It is better to borrow for projects, to improve road safety and foster national integration” is another insult to Nigerians. The frequency of President Tinubu’s borrows is alarming and worrisome. There is no key infrastructure in Nigeria that has been revived since the APC government came into government in 2015. None at all.

Yet their mantra was Change and Renewed Hope. Where is the change? How have our hopes been renewed? Nigerians were told to tighten their belts for tomorrow’s economic emancipation. But what we have is no longer belt tightening but strangulation.

The poor are suffering while the rich are in political and economic comfort. What actually has the continuous borrowing been used for? Businesses are dying, there is food shortage, prices of commodities have skyrocketed.

When you remove subsidy to save the economy and, the same economy is over laboured with debts, not driven with transparency, accountability and sincerity, then the economy is surely heading for the rocks.

The masses cannot continue to tighten their belts when the country’s leadership lacks integrity and credibility in the management of the economy.

Intermittently our national grid collapses. The country is in total darkness as a result of lack of power. The Presidential Villa, Nigeria’s seat of political power has been equipped with Solar system to power the villa. That is how bad our electricity sector has become.

But this same President during his campaigns in 2023 promised Nigerians permanent power. He also told Nigerians that if he failed to provide permanent power, he should not be voted for second term. Why is he still interested in second term knowing he failed in his promise of ensuring constant power?

Nigerians thought he had the magic wand to stabilize electricity. In other climes, leadership of the NASS will be at the back of the Presidency to ensure reduction of the high electricity tariffs Nigerians are paying. No doubt, Nigerians are being ripped-off by the power distribution companies in collaboration with the federal government. We don’t have constant power supply, yet we are forced to pay very high tariffs.

Why has the President not equipped one general hospital in the country since he took over Aso Rock? Till date, he and most government officials still travel overseas for medical treatments because of the collapse of our health institutions. Where have all the borrowings and other revenues gone into?

There is nothing wrong with borrowing. It is not a problem but, when there is no visible result to show for the borrowing, it becomes “borrow and steal.” The economy is in shambles. People are dying of hunger and sickness. There is poverty and hardship everywhere. There is no visible move by the seat of power to repair the economy. Prices of food items in the market have gone beyond the reach of the common man. Farmers can’t access their farms. For all these and more, we can conclude that the President and his APC government have committed economic sabotage against Nigerians.

There is no reform of the economy anywhere. It is pure contradiction of anything that resembles improvement of the economy that we see. When farmers cannot access their farms because of fear of terrorists, bandits and kidnappers, there will surely be a shortage of food supply in the country. This is a criminal disruption of the economy. The country cannot continue in this rigmarole. We have a leadership collapse in the country.

Something urgent must be done. Citizens of Nigeria must rise and take up the challenge to demand that their wealth be spent wisely?

The tragedy of Nigeria is not merely about poor leadership, it is also about the absence of courageous followership. It is simply because Nigerians are docile that our leaders take us for granted. Nigerians are more interested in personal gains than in the advancement of their country and peoples. Nigerian citizens are more interested in the crumbs, the leftovers on the table than to challenge bad governance at all levels.

The people of this country must demand for true political and economic restructuring of the country for good living conditions to manifest. Freedom, it is said, comes by struggle.

In a recent remark, former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi criticized the recent borrowing of the federal government. He remarked that, Nigeria cannot remove wastages, remove subsidy yet keep borrowing. He asked, why are the economic reforms of the government not working? He challenged the Federal Government to give account of the 100% revenues in the last three years.

What is this Senate actually doing to repair the battered economy? Is it a taboo for the NASS to insist on the repair of any of the four existing refineries?

What is wrong if the Senate insists that the FG repairs the collapsed federal roads in Nigeria before embarking on the ‘super highways’, that is ostensibly awarded to some cronies of the president? Nigerian roads have broken down.

The insecurity in the country is worsening by the day. Thousands of lives have been committed to mother earth. It has thrown families into mourning, deprived farmers from accessing their farmlands thereby causing hunger and sickness in the land. Why can’t the National Assembly intensify efforts at ensuring improvement of security in the country? What about the agricultural sector? What is this NASS led by Akpabio doing to better the lives of Nigerians?

The President of the Senate is more of President Tinubu’s boy. Every loan request from President Tinubu that should be questioned, scrutinized and debated on the floor of the Senate is hurriedly passed.

No country deserves to have a Senate President like Akpabio at the helm of affairs. In normal and advanced democracies, Akpabio would have been sent packing from his position. He is not a true representative of the people.

A NASS of any democracy should prioritize the welfare of the people above any other interest. The President of the Senate who publicly declared to the world that, “insecurity will stop (in Nigeria) after 2027 election” is not fit to continue to be a leader in the Senate or even a member of the National Assembly.

A Senate that supports the award of contracts without due process, with no bidding, no transparency and accountability is not fit to exist l. Nigerians did not vote members of the NASS to only pass loan requests that have impoverished the people. They were voted to make laws that will improve the country’s socio-economic and political development. They were voted to be a check on the excesses of the executive.