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John Onaiyekan, a former Catholic Archbishop of Abuja and cardinal, has voiced concerns over President Bola Tinubu’s chances in the 2027 election, arguing that if the president sticks to his current policies, it might seriously hurt his chances of winning reelection.
Onaiyekan reportedly made the comments on Wednesday in an interview with reporters in Abuja after attending the public lecture held by the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) during Communication Week.

The cardinal warned that the president’s political prospects may suffer as a result of what he saw as a widening gulf between the Nigerian authorities and the populace.

He underlined the need for policies that are in line with the realities of the people and encouraged the president to recognize the hardships faced by regular Nigerians.

“My advice for Mr. President is to find ways and means of finding out what Nigeria is actually going through,” Onaiyekan stated.

Not those in his immediate vicinity who constantly give him high praise. They ought to learn. These days, it is the responsibility of all leaders.

“Although it wouldn’t be a horrible idea, I’m not telling him to move to Mpape and stay for two days. However, he should be able to learn about the survival of the people in Mpape. He should also be aware of how families are making ends meet on a daily wage of N30,000.

He should do more to improve the standard of living for Nigerians because they are the ones he is supposed to serve.

“I don’t think it is unfair to the government to suggest that we have seen a significant decline in our level of well-being over the past two years. The government can claim that they are not to blame.

They may claim to have given it their all. However, the purpose of the government is to prevent such from happening. The government exists to ensure that Nigerians’ standard of living is maintained and, if feasible, enhanced.

Additionally, it seems like a fantastic moment. For him to at least attempt that, two years is halfway done.

They will always remember him if he shifts his focus in that area and implements policies that truly help Nigeria’s impoverished citizens.

But if he keeps acting in this manner for the remainder of his tenure, he won’t win in a free and fair election. Because if we are not feeling well, how can the nation bring him back?

“Of course, if they have already decided and are not waiting for us to vote, then if we win, then fine, we applaud the country; we will go on.” Going down, going down…

According to him, the president ought to effectively lead the nation and make it livable for the average Nigerian.

There are still 250 million of us in this country,” Onaiyekan stated. We are fighting, and we will prevail. I thus hope that Mr. President will receive that counsel from those around him.

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“The elections took place more than two years ago. Whether or not he won the election, he is no longer concerned. We have finally agreed after the Supreme Court ruled that he won.

We’ve decided he prevailed. The Supreme Court stated that there is nowhere else for us to turn. He should now merely govern, deal with security everywhere, raise the standard of living for Nigerians, combat corruption, and improve our people’s economic situation.

After President Bola Tinubu ordered Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) authorities to unseal premises seized for non-payment of ground rent, the PDP’s national headquarters remains locked and key more than twenty-four hours later.
An outrage was reportedly caused by the FCTA’s wholesale sealing of properties on Monday, but Tinubu stepped in and ordered the defaulting houses to be unsealed.
Before the deadline, the President advised the defaulters to regularize all of their land titles and provided them a 14-day grace period to pay the ground rent or face a penalty of ₦2 million.

At around 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, the entrance of the PDP headquarters in Wuse Zone 5, Abuja, remained padlocked, with the FCTA seal adhered to the lock, according to Daily Trust.
There were reports of party employees sitting outside the main gate and others wandering around, complaining about the situation.

A staff member who talked off the record commented on the development, saying he believes there is an underlying directive that PDP should not be opened.

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“I was here when the FCTA staff came around yesterday,” the individual stated. They visited FIRS, NAPTIP, and the Ibro Hotel and opened them all. They sped out in their car as soon as they arrived at our office.

“The director of Lands told me that they are still awaiting AGIS’s directive to unseal PDP when I followed them to their office.”

The PDP has not yet responded to the most recent development in an official statement as of the time this report was filed.

Under the aegis of the Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners (ALDRAP), legislative lawyers have taken steps to oblige senators from Nigeria to pay back a portion of their wages and benefits that they have been receiving since 2023 because of their said poor performance.
It is also being demanded that 40 senators refund all of the compensation and benefits they got while serving concurrently in the Nigerian Senate and the ECOWAS and Pan-African parliaments, which is against Nigerian law.
In a pre-action notice addressed to Senate President Godswill Akpabio, the legislative attorneys who have petitioned the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal as consumers unhappy with the senators’ services have sent a message to the Senate.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection panel’s rules provide that the respondent in a lawsuit is first served with a pre-action notice before being called to appear before the panel.

The letter containing the pre-action notice was delivered on May 26, 2025, and was signed by Amuga Jesse Williams, Administrative Secretary for ALDRAP.

The letter is titled “Pre-action Notice: Demand made pursuant to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission Act, 2018 for the reimbursement of 78% of the total salaries and allowances received by each of the 109 senators from May 2023 to May 2025 for 12% performance and fulfillment of their statutory responsibilities to constituents (consumers) and reimbursement of all salaries and allowances received by the 40 senators who neglected their duties at the National Assembly to serve as legislators in the Pan-African Parliament and the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), respectively. This is in violation of Section 68 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 Constitution, which forbids senators from serving concurrently in both the National Assembly and another legislative body.

The correspondence was sent to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Federation’s Accountant-General, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Secretary-General of the ECOWAS Parliament, and the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Parliament.

As per the legislative counsel, the Senate has only performed 12 percent of its duties since the 10th National Assembly began in May 2023, according to the data currently in existence.

They are thus asking the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal to order the senators to pay back to the national treasury, through the Accountant-General of the Federation, 78 percent of the salaries and benefits they received between May 2023 and May 2025 because of the poor quality of their services.

According to the letter, “The Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners, or ALDRAP, is a professional association of legislative lawyers that encourages legislators and other members of the legislative ecosystem to adhere to the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution.” Our strategies to enforce compliance include both public education and public interest litigation.

“We have attested to an affidavit of facts that back up the claims we make in this letter. It’s contained or connected. The 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Senate serve as representatives of the constituents, or consumers, of the legislative services they provide.

The following demands are made by us, the constituents and consumers, in accordance with the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission Act of 2018 because we are unhappy with the legislative services rendered by the aforementioned 109 senators:

From May 2023 to the present, 78% of the total wages and benefits received by each of the 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Senate should be returned to the Accountant-General of the Federation (equivalent to ₦15,000,000 per senator per month).

Each of the 40 senators that serve in the ECOWAS and Pan-African parliaments receives ₦15,000,000 in salary and benefits, which are calculated at a minimum of 10 sessions annually.

“Please be advised that we will have no choice but to initiate legal proceedings before the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal in compliance with the applicable laws if you do not comply within seven days of the date of this letter.”

Sections 69 and 104 of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018, Section 130 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015, and Sections 6 and 14 of the Nigerian Constitution all contributed to the suit’s public interest, according to an affidavit filed on May 27, 2025, and deposed to by Jesse Amuga.

According to the affidavit, “The subject matter of this suit relates to the performance or otherwise of statutory duties imposed on the 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by sections 4, 88, and 89 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), which include lawmaking, oversight, and effective representation.”

Between June 2023 and May 2025, the 10th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria engaged in a legislative pattern and behavior that amounts to failure and neglect of the statutory duties for which they have collected public funds through salaries and allowances, thus enriching themselves at the expense of the public.

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“I rely on the empirical findings and observations made by Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja, a legislative law and legal drafting expert with 21 years of professional legal experience, as stated in his Open Letter to the Senate President, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, and the Majority Leader, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, dated May 26, 2025… The following specifics and real-world examples of legislative failure were among the things that Dr. Jaja’s letter did highlight:

A. The National Anthem Act, 2024 and the Bill for Extension of the Tenure of the Inspector-General of Police were two Executive Bills that were passed by the 10th Senate in less than a week without any public hearings or serious examination.

In violation of Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution, which calls for a two-thirds majority vote, the Senate allegedly passed a law on March 20, 2025, endorsing the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State. C. Based on an analysis of 475 bills considered since 2023, the Order Paper Parliamentary Monitoring Group found that just 5.4% of them addressed security, and only 7.3% dealt with the two most important issues facing Nigerians: food security and agriculture.

The 10th Senate failed in its monitoring and representative functions because it prioritized approving executive-sponsored laws over private member bills and public interest problems.

The affidavit, which the Daily Post allegedly obtained, further stated, “The National Assembly Committees on Constitutional Review have consistently received ₦5 billion since 2011.” Since Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the Senate Committee on Constitutional Review’s chairman at the time, was accused of spending more than ₦8 billion of the cash, some people have demanded that they return the money. The argument put up by Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele that the 2025 Budget was subjected to due diligence and that 39 meetings were had with the Executive prior to the Tax Reform Bills being passed is selective and at odds with the Senate’s actual legislative record.

Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, openly declared that senators were not chosen to “fight” the Executive, suggesting that the Senate is not supposed to hold the Executive branch of government accountable. This is a clear infraction of the separation of powers doctrine and the legislative oversight duty. However, this same Senate has taken harsh and excessively confrontational measures against one member, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, including: (a) imposing an unlawful six-month suspension that is longer than allowed by Senate Rules and court precedent. (b) She was the target of a number of legal actions, media campaigns, and purported criminal charges.

This uneven use of legislative authority, which includes hostility toward a fellow lawmaker yet submissiveness to the Executive, is a glaring disregard for the Senate’s institutional duty as a separate branch of government. While collecting salaries and allowances, the senators of the 10th Assembly violated the value-for-money principle by not fulfilling their constitutionally mandated duties of lawmaking, oversight, and constituent representation. As a result, they must return 78% of their salaries and allowances for the June 2023–May 2025 period.

Aside from the aforementioned, a number of National Assembly members violated Section 68(1)(a) of the Constitution, which forbids sitting lawmakers from holding any other office of profit or emolument, by accepting appointments and being sworn in as members of the Pan-African Parliament and the ECOWAS Parliament in April 2024 while still serving as Nigerian lawmakers.

In the affidavit, the legislative attorneys also mentioned that the senators in question have been taking part in legislative activities within Pan-African or ECOWAS organizations while maintaining their salaries, benefits, and privileges as members of the Nigerian National Assembly.

“The principle of legislative integrity and accountability is violated by this dual occupancy and compensation from both offices, which is against the Constitution.”

Nigerian citizens would continue to suffer from the continuous abuse of legislative power, the association argued, if the court did not order the appropriate authorities to look into and start the process of recovering the salary and allowances paid, as well as to disqualify lawmakers who were not eligible.

The court must “grant the reliefs sought in this suit” for the sake of justice and public trust, they insisted.

OrderPaper, Nigeria’s premier independent parliamentary monitoring organization, revealed in an October 2024 report that more than half of the bills introduced in the Senate between June 2023 and May 2024 were repeats of those from previous assemblies, especially the previous 9th Assembly.

The report also revealed that nearly one-third of the bills dealt with in the House of Representatives during that same period were reintroduced from the previous assembly.

The results showed that there was a significant discrepancy between Bills’ sponsorship and advancement. OrderPaper’s analysis showed that only 19 of the 475 bills the Senate introduced between June 2023 and May 2024 were passed into law.

Additionally, the performance report highlighted a lack of attention to important national issues, as only 5.8% of House and 7.3% of Senate bills dealt with agricultural and food security. Security-related bills made up 7.2% of House bills and 5.4% of Senate bills, respectively.

According to the report, “bills addressing these issues remain few, with many not progressing past the first reading,” despite the noteworthy difficulties that residents in these areas have faced recently.

In its first year, from May 2023 to May 2024, the 10th Senate proposed 464 bills, but only 19 of them were passed, according to the documents that are currently available.

Only seven bills were passed during the second year, which ran from May 2024 to May 2025, out of 341 that were introduced. By December 2024, the House of Representatives had only passed 114 of the 1,727 bills that had been filed.

Abuja, May 27, 2025  — As Nigeria marked Children’s Day on May 27, 2025, Winners’ Schools joined in nationwide celebrations with a vibrant blend of fun-filled activities, educational excursions, and heartfelt prayers for safety, growth, and the future of every child. The day, dedicated to celebrating the rights and well-being of children, As part of their Children’s Day celebration,

Pupils from Winners’ Schools were treated to an unforgettable excursion to the National Children’s Park and Zoo in Abuja.

Early in the day, concerned parents took to the class WhatsApp group to inquire about school closing time. However, Brother Benedict David clarified that, in honor of Children’s Day, the pupils had no fixed closing time, emphasizing that the day was dedicated solely to fun, learning, and celebration.

Parents and guardians quickly rallied in support, flooding the group chat with prayers for safety and thanksgiving. Messages like “May the Lord guide their steps and watch over all of them” and “May the Lord protect you people” reflected the communal spirit and spiritual covering. Muslim parents also offered prayers in their own way, as Winners’ Schools is made up of both Christian and Muslims.

The excitement peaked when Mrs. Onuh E. A., proprietress, shared real-time photo updates from the excursion. From preparations and arrival at the park to engaging moments like observing buffaloes and an ostrich guided by Tour Guide Rose, the updates delighted parents and showcased the enriching experience.

The trip formed part of Adventure Week (Day 2) and was both educational and thrilling, offering the children firsthand encounters with a variety of fascinating animals.

Guided by trained staff and knowledgeable tour guides, the children explored various sections of the zoo, where they encountered a wide range of animals in a safe and controlled environment.

Among the highlights of the visit were

• The Lion Enclosure: The pupils stood in awe as they observed the king of the jungle resting majestically in its enclosure. For many children, it was their first time seeing a lion up close—a thrilling moment that sparked both wonder and curiosity.

• Buffaloes and Ostriches: The children marveled at the towering ostriches and the strong, calm buffaloes grazing nearby. These animals sparked interesting discussions about their natural habitats and unique characteristics.

• Three Different Species of Monkeys: The monkeys delighted the children with their playful behavior, swinging from tree branches and interacting with one another. Guides explained the differences between the species—highlighting their habitats, diets, and behaviors.

• Crocodile and Python: The children got a close look at a fearsome crocodile basking near its pool and a large python coiled in its glass enclosure. Safety was a top priority, with zookeepers ensuring that all animals were secure.

• Snake Section: Other snake species, including both venomous and non-venomous varieties, were also on display. The handlers used the opportunity to educate the pupils about snake safety and identification.

• Tortoise: A gentle giant among the reptiles, the tortoise moved slowly but surely, sparking laughter among the little ones who were fascinated by its hard shell and calm nature.

• Hyena: Though often misunderstood, the hyena’s presence allowed guides to dispel common myths about the animal, educating the children on its role in the ecosystem.

• Horse and Camel Rides: A major highlight for the adventurous pupils was the opportunity to ride on horses and camels, guided by handlers. This part of the trip combined fun with cultural learning, as children were taught how camels are used for transportation in arid regions.

• Goats and Farm Animals: In the petting zoo section, children interacted with goats and other domesticated animals, learning the basics of animal care and farm life.

Throughout the day, the children were supervised closely by teachers, volunteers, and zoo staff. Lunch was served on-site, and plenty of water and breaks were provided to keep everyone refreshed and safe.

The afternoon saw more inquiries as parents asked about pickup time. Confirming their return, Mrs. Onuh cheerfully updated, “Yes,” indicating safe arrival and lunchtime, to the relief of waiting parents.

The day ended with more gratitude and applause. “Thank God for the friendly weather and the fun our beloved children had,” said Sis Ifeoma Christopher, while another parent praised the school’s management for organizing a memorable trip and prayed for continued blessings and academic excellence for the children.

The excursion wasn’t just about animals—it was about connection, learning, and sparking a lifelong interest in wildlife and conservation.

“Thank you to our amazing parents and teachers for making this day so memorable,” said Mrs. Onuh E. A. “The children not only had fun but also learned so much. We are grateful for the good weather, safety, and successful return.”

With sportswear set as the dress code for the next day’s activity, Day 3 of the “Adventure Week,” the successful outing demonstrated not only fun and learning but also the strong bond between the school, pupils, and parents—all working together to create cherished memories.

For enquiries and admission, please contact: +234 703 592 2476 or +234 703 650 5191.

For their roles in the unlawful incarceration of Adara elders in 2019, Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State, and five other individuals were given ₦900 million in damages by a Federal High Court in Kaduna.
On Tuesday, Justice Hauwa’u Buhari rendered the decision in a lawsuit brought by Awemi Dio Maisamari and eight other elders from Southern Kaduna Adara.
The ₦900 million compensation was due to El-Rufai, who was found to have personally planned their arbitrary arrest.

Along with the compensation, the Nigeria Police Force, the Inspector General of Police, and the Commissioner of Police of Kaduna State were also given ₦10 million in general damages and ₦10 million in special damages by the court.

The decision was hailed as a major win in the ongoing fight against power abuse by Gloria Mabeiam Ballason, the applicants’ attorney. “It holds people in positions of power accountable, even when they are protected by immunity,” she said, calling the ruling a landmark ruling.

Regardless matter whether the office holders are momentarily protected by immunity, Ballason said, “This ruling represents a turning point against the misuse of authority and accountability for misuse.” The enjoyment of impunity by those in positions of power does not justify executive lawlessness.

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Following El-Rufai’s term as governor, the complaint was brought, and the former governor was designated as the first respondent in his individual capacity.

Following the assassination of Dr. Raphael Maiwada Galadima, the supreme ruler of the Adara people, the applicants were taken into custody in 2019.

Maisamari and other community leaders were allegedly arrested at the time by El-Rufai, who had labeled them as security concerns in Kajuru. Bawa Magaji, a former commissioner, and a former police commissioner were among those arrested.

But when the Attorney General discovered no evidence against them, the people who had been imprisoned were later freed.